Beyond the Stars

The first reviewer wants every movie to be an academy award winner. This movie is way better and more meaningful. I saw it years ago and would like to find it on my rental stores shelves someday, I would rent it in an instant. Good message and great performances. Well worth the time to watch. Sometimes these little TV movies are just what you're looking for on a Friday night. Even if the ending leaves a bit of thought, sometimes this grey type of ending is what is called for. Makes you kind of think of the message you read into the movie. Not all good movies have perfect endings, perfect performances or perfect editing. If you can overlook some minor flaws you will enjoy this movie.

This feel good film with a little touch of SF is a little gem and I don't think it gets the appreciation it deserves.

You shouldn't take the film too seriously but it has its heart in the right place and that's what I think is most important.

Eric dreams of a future as an astronaut, when he is more or less forced to stay with his father for a few weeks he accidentally gets the chance to meet his idol, the famous austronaut Paul Andrews, through a new girlfriend.

That first meeting doesn't go so well but gradually a friendship develops between the two.

Ok that aspect could have been worked out a bit better but basically the story is entertaining enough.

Christian Slater, Martin Sheen, and also Sharon Stone do well in their roles.

My review was written in May 1989 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

Martin Sheen's ever-ready support for liberal causes isn't enough to put over "Personal Choice", a sappy, heavy-handed message picture aimed at theaters but too weak to qualify as even a made-for-tv feature.

"Cocoon" author Davod Saperstein offers a lifeless tale of an astronaut (Sheen) stricken with eventually fatal radiation poisoning during his moonwalk on a mid-1970s Apollo mission.

His bitter memories and disillusionment are rekindled when a gung-ho teen (Christian Slater) who idolizes him befriends the hermit-like Sheen while visting his divorced father, who lives nearby. Script contrivance has dad (Robert Foxworth), a NASA scientist who has been laod off, cuing a late-in-film confrontation with Sheen over who really did the work, the space scientists or the flyboys.

Despite the presence of beautiful leading ladies Olivia D'Abo and Sharon Stone (as Slater's and Foxworth's girlfriends), pic is all talk and almost no physical action. Characters remain remote and Saperstein muffs an emotional climax scene by framing a sentimental photo of a character with an in-joke of a "Cocoon" paperback in the foreground.

With cryptic flashbacks of Sheen's moonwalk ladled out every so often, film finally delives it message direct to the camera long after viewers have lost interest: from out in space one can obtain the perspective to see what we're doing on Earth, and want to fix it right now.

Icing on he cake is a laughable cameo by no less than F. Murray Abraham as a wheelchair-bound scientist (injured in an incident with a nasty Japanese whaling ship!) who exhorts us to stop killing the whales. Saperstein's message is, of course, correct and timely, but delivered in a form suitable for showing only at fundraisers attended by the committed.

Sheen is relentlessly earnest and boring, while Slater still displays those annoying Jack Nicholon inflections and mannerims (apparenty internalized) that have plagued his recent roles. If Nicholson had been cast as the astronaut (a la "Terms of Endearment") Slater's idolizing might have come off.

Lensed largely in Vancouve (with a touristy stopoff in Huntsville, Alabama, to visit NASA artifacts), pic is visually bland. A brief special-effects finale looks tacked-on and silly.

Beyond the Stars is one of those surprising movies. It has a great cast that give very good performances despite the low-budget feel of the film. While the underlying subjects of the movie may not apeal to many people, the time-honored coming of age story that involves all of the main characters should be appreciated by the most basic of movie viewers.

The surprising "twist," which is not much of a twist at all, is a nice addition for those that are the "dreamers" for whom the film was obviously written.

Beyond the Stars is a much under-appreciated film that deserves a look. I'm sure you'll be surprised as well.

Multiple types of movie overlapping, and it's very hard to like this movie. But there are moments where Martin Sheen and Christian Slater and Robert foxworth and Sharon Stone are radiant and I feel like I'm back in the 1980s again.

When you pull a 1989 film out of its context, it looks pretty weird. My advice would be if it's not working for you, switch it off. These 1980s films have a rhythm and a logic that doesn't work anymore, is my take.