Max Q

A space shuttle mission is partly funded by a television company, using it as a platform to launch a satellite and put a journalist on the shuttle. However when the satellite causes an explosion the crew are forced to try and repair the damage to try a forced landing back on earth.

From the opening use of stock footage and immediate title, you know you're in TV movie land. The story gives rise to plenty of emotional, soapy dialogue but it also creates some genuinely exciting scenes. The effects are mixed – it uses a lot of stock footage, but it also has some good effects. It doesn't compete with the more professional Apollo 13 film, however it's quite good – even if the ending is just absurd, blockbuster-style nonsense.

The cast are pure TV standard and don't sound real when the stress hits, however they do OK with the action stuff. My main problem with them lay with the fact that some of them seemed to be doing impressions of other actors – in particular Blake often looked and sounded like Christian Slater.

Overall, it passed the time – but it's not that great, watch a real film instead!

This film laboured along with some of the most predictable story lines and shallow characters ever seen. The writer obviously bought the playbook "How to write a space disaster movie" and followed it play by play. In particular, the stereo-typical use of astronauts talking to their loved ones from outer space - putting on a brave show in the face of disaster - has been done time and time again.

Max Q appears to have been written in the hope that the producers would throw $50 million at the project. But, judging by the latter half of the film which contained numerous lame attempts at special effects, the producers could only muster $50 thousand. To learn that the film was nominated for a "Special Visual Effects" Emmy has me absolutely gob-smacked.

I think a handful of high school students with a pass in Media Studies could have created more believable effects!

And the plot holes are too numerous to mention. But I will pick one out as an example. Now, I'm no NASA expert, but surely it's highly implausible that a worker attached to the shuttle simulator would suddenly hold a position of power in the control room when things start to go pear-shaped with the program. Surely there is someone more experienced at Mission Control who the Program Director would call on rather than a twenty-nine year old who has not been in the control room before.

The only saving grace for this film is the work of Bill Campbell. He manages to make a good attempt at salvaging something out of the train wreck that is this script.

I give this film 2 out of 10, with the above-average work of Bill Campbell in the lead role saving it from a lower mark.

Obviously the writers of this mulch had this brief - "Imagine Apollo 13 but on the shuttle with a sexy imperiled crew trying to get back to earth". If this sounds stupid, that is because it is.

Throw in some dreadful special effects, a low budget, a total disregard for reality & physics and a plot which consists of one over the top crisis after the next and a happy ending. The actors however do make the best of a bad situation, but this one is a total dud.

I pity the cast of this film.

Apparently Jerry Too-Much-Testosterone Bruckheimer didn't get enough space action with Armageddon so he had to slap this piece of crap together in about two months and throw it into an empty timeslot on ABC for god knows what reason. This abomination is highly inaccurate, badly written, and a complete insult to anyone who knows anything about flying or the space program. NASA deciding the day before launch to send a reporter into space.......HA! Even the Russians wouldn't do that. And using a blowtorch in space? Who was their tech advisor, Baghdad Bob?

But aside from the technical neurosis, the film comes across as a cheap attempt at a modern day Apollo 13 and a tax shelter (probably left-over money from Armageddon, since they didn't hire real writers for that either). All in all, don't bother with this one. If you want a good modern space movie, check out Space Cowboys. At least that one didn't have you groaning every five seconds like this one did.

This movie, essentially a modern-day _Apollo 13_, was entertaining in the tradition of Jerry Bruckheimer films. Overall, I enjoyed it, though performances from Campbell and Brewster were fairly flat. In my opinion, Geoffrey Blake was the standout, playing a civilian filmmaker sent to document the launch of the corporate satellite. He created a character that was easy to identify with and entertaining to watch. Overall, this is light, low-budget entertainment; people in search of a rip-roaring blockbuster would do better to rent _Armageddon_ again. But as made-for-TV movies go, this one is a standout.