Rocket's Red Glare

This was a really good movie. It was interesting to see someone build a real rocket for a science project and then actually launch it into space. I'm not that interested in space movies like "Armageddon" or "Apollo 14," but I thought this movie had a good concept and good values. I also enjoyed Danielle Fishel's appearance in this film.

I really liked this movie a lot!

I found it on cable right as it was starting while channel surfing one night and thought it was worth my time.

The made for TV movie is about a mother that lost her husband and her son is the only one that can go into space and save us all from something that I can't remember. It has been a while.

The boys grandfather was encouraging him to learn about becoming an astronaut and I believe that the boys father died that way somehow.

Anyway...if you get a chance watch it.

Let's just say that cable channels designed specifically for "kids" or "family" obviously don't have the first clue as to what either want. Case in point the Fox Family Network and their film, "Rocket's Red Glare." I guess that to whoever it mattered that a story about a boy traveling to space to save astronaunts sounded like a great idea.

But did anyone happen to read the script before they shot it? I'm 16, the target age for this network, and this film was SO VERY DUMB! It insults the intelligence of everyone - including my ten-year old sister. At the crucial point in the film, when the boy hands the astronauts something to save the day, the lead kid, played by Ryan Merrimen, opens the hatch of the capsule; my sister, all of 10, says, "you can't open those hatches in space - it'll never close and the kid will burn up during re-entry!"

She's 10 and she new more than the writer and director.

Anyway, this was pathetic. Not only dumb, but also the acting was bad. Not very good anyway you cut it.

This started out as a good movie, a boy and his class, with the help of his Grandfather are restoring a Redstone Rocket and its capsule in honor of his father, a dead Astronaut. Of course, there was never a MR-10 flight planned on a Redstone, the canceled Mercury 10 was an Atlas flight with Shepard. But there are a few surplus parts around to make the assembly of the rocket as a museum piece believable. But the rescue of a badly damaged Shuttle with a little black box by a 16 year old boy in an old Mercury capsule loses credibility real fast.

They should have left it on the farm and taught people about the Mercury program, something that is often forgot after Apollo. This was too much like Spacecamp. But without the cute robot. Make that annoying robot.

This looked like being a good movie about the dreams of a young boy and the relationship he has with his Grandfather. Unfortunately a disaster happens towards the end, in terms of story. When the vehicle for the drama (the rocket) becomes the focus with a crazy finale.

This resulting madness totally destroys any good ground work that was laid in the first part of the film.

My advice, watch it, and when people in suits show up in black cars, accidentally wonder off and imagine your own cool ending.