El espacio entre nosotros

You know how it goes. The boy (Asa Butterfield) meets the girl (Britt Robertson), there's mutual liking and they want to meet... but there's a space between them. So he will travel to Earth from the Mars colony where he was born.

Also starring: Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, and B.D. Wong, because even the coolest teenagers need some adults around.

"The Space Between Us" rides on the current wave of Young Adult, or YA for short, novels and movies which has dowsed the cinemas for the last ten years or so.

It's still about romance, some sci-fi and action like the most of them (or at least the most popular of them) but it brings some refreshing changes to the menu.

It's based on an original screenplay and not novel. It offers sci-fi and action without relying on done to death YA clichés (dystopian society, dating or fighting supernatural beings, etc). It puts characters in real danger so you can't always predict whether everybody's gonna make it. It doesn't have clear-cut good and bad guys...

And last but by far not least, the movie has a nice classic Steven Spielberg-ian feel which puts the sense of wonder and adventure back to sci-fi which, in my humble opinion, is often missing or buried under all those visual effects and pizazz setpieces.

Even good old Spielberg himself is not always able to pull it off: the movie makes you actually care about the characters because there's a real human backbone to the story. It's entertainment but it also has heart.

All this rests very much on the lead man Asa Butterfield who was 18 during the filming and turns 20 this April.

Former child star of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas", Scorsese's "Hugo" and "Ender's Game" fame, this guy has grown to become a fine young actor indeed.

I very much enjoyed his soft but sure performance as an innocent and fragile alien braving the world unknown to him. He has found a seemingly perfect balance between strange, childlike and soulful that the role asks of him, and I'd be glad to see him getting some awards or nominations for this standout work.

He even has this memorable, Pinocchio-ish appearance and style of moving which seems suitable for a person not used to Earth's gravity.

The other characters stay more in the background, so this turns out to be Asa Butterfield's show, and he more than fulfills the promise.

The next most interesting performance comes from Oldman who ventures in the land of brashness and theatricality, in a good way. The aging thespian hasn't offered this kind of colorfulness for quite some time (in a big movie, at least) and I enjoyed it to the point of feeling that his character was underused. Holding him in the background makes sense in the context of a whole story, though.

If you find my score surprisingly high, please remember that it's made for a YA crowd, or at least a teenager in all of us. I would not recommend it alongside 8 out of 10 movies made for older viewer groups. Probably.

But 8 is not too generous. I liked "Space" very much and its overall quality more than compensates a shallow story which surely would work better longer. This could be a bona fide modern classic if the characters and events had more room to develop and breathe. Maybe in the form of (mini-)series or something.

If you like "The Space Between Us" and look for something similar to watch, I would recommend 2014's "The Fault in Our Stars" for moving YA story, or 2015's "Tomorrowland" as an uneven but good example of how to combine sci-fi and action in a YA movie.

I choose to end this review with an off-topic anecdote which I just happen to like very much:

Q: Why did astronaut leave his wife? A: He needed more space

This is basically a movie about two teenagers on the run. They meet for the first time. The girl is streetwise and assertive. The boy is geeky and naive. They drive off through an America with lots of great scenery, and there's humour and romance and some feel good music. This is what is at the heart of the movie and it works well.

What doesn't work well is the back story, about the boy being born on mars. It makes for a pretty uneven film that starts out as a sci-fi movie with a crew of astronauts heading out to the stars, then morphs into something completely different. The special effects in space are wasted, because this part of the story didn't really need to be shown. Plus, some of the incidental music doesn't work too well.

The makers should've just stuck to the story of a lost boy who wanted to see the world, and a girl who just didn't fit in and was willing to show it to him.

Visionary leader Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) organizes the first Martian settlement, East Texas. Sarah Elliot is one of the six astronauts to be the first settlers. Everybody is shock to find that she's pregnant. Fearing a PR nightmare, her pregnancy and her subsequent childbirth death is covered up. Sixteen years later, Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) has been raised in secret by scientists like Kendra Wyndham (Carla Gugino). His only friends are a robot and an online friend, foster kid Tulsa (Britt Robertson), who doesn't know his true identity. His upbringing on Mars has left him incapable of living in Earth's gravity. He manages to escape and with Tulsa's help, goes in search for his unknown father.

Britt Robertson is getting a little old to play a teenager but it actually works well for this character. She's world-weary which matches well with the fish-out-of-water Asa Butterfield. The age difference brings out the experience difference in the two characters. They make for a cute couple.

The main problem is the set-up and the questions that arise. One must ignore a lot of these nagging questions. The kid has trouble with 1g but he has to endure multiple gs in his travels. It's also a pretty big secret to be kept by NASA. The distance between Earth and Mars is about 10 light minutes which would make online communications noticeably delayed. The questions keep pilling on and on. A few more rewrites are required.

Okay, I'm old school dude. Like Golden Age of Science Fiction old. Maybe I'm too tolerant. But I'm not the only one! There is a lot of slamming going on here. The truth is this isn't a bad movie. If you want to be cynical then go right ahead and not enjoy yourself. This isn't science fiction. It's fantasy. Most of the gripes I read are legit. There are plenty of things that aren't scientifically correct. The plot is a new twist on an ancient concept. It's a STORY. I like the movie because it was fun to watch. Entertaining. And for a change, not a shot was fired except for rockets. So cut it a little slack and go in and be entertained.

Don't be confused, this is a teen romance picture. It's just that one teen is from Earth, and the other is from Mars. I actually found it very sweet. Mars boy without a clue, and Earth girl with all the answers. Great acting, great direction, fantastic score. The special effect were a bit dodgy. This film was was supposed to come out in August, then pulled to December, and now it's released in February. Please see this film!!! I found it very uplifting. The performances of Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, and BD Wong are fantastic. I have to keep writing because IMDb won't let a review of anything less than 10 lines ling post. Did I mention this is a kid friendly film? Thank you.