{"id":1691,"date":"2017-08-21T07:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/?p=1691"},"modified":"2017-08-20T19:30:15","modified_gmt":"2017-08-21T01:30:15","slug":"spacecamp-a-bad-movie-ive-watched-many-many-many-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/spacecamp-a-bad-movie-ive-watched-many-many-many-times\/","title":{"rendered":"SPACECAMP: A Bad Movie I’ve Watched Many, Many, MANY Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bad<\/a><\/p>\n

Is there a movie that is more pure, uncut 80s in its essence than Spacecamp<\/i><\/b>?\u00a0 I mean, it’s got a team of Plucky Young Misfits, there\u2019s a cute robot.\u00a0\u00a0 Plus, it all rests on a pretty big gimmick.<\/p>\n

So, here\u2019s the gimmick of Spacecamp: teenagers accidentally launched into space.\u00a0 Hijinks ensue.\u00a0 But not typical teenager hijinks. \u00a0It’s not like there’s a kegger in the ISS or something like that. \u00a0The hijinks of “Oh, damnit, we’re in space were a thousand different things can go wrong and five children are going to die”, which are less, you know, wacky and fun. \u00a0In fact, this movie pretty much bombed for that very reason, because in between production and release, there was the Challenger explosion.\u00a0 So marketing a Wacky NASA Accident movie was\u2026 problematic.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We start with a bunch of kids at Spacecamp, which is a real camp teenagers can go to, where they get trained \u201cjust like astronauts\u2014and notice I didn\u2019t say real<\/i> astronauts, because at SpaceCamp, you are REAL astronauts\u201d.\u00a0 Word for word from the movie, people: condescension to children who are paying you for the privilege.<\/p>\n

First we establish Kate Capshaw as a NASA astronaut hopeful who gets stuck with being a counselor, since her significant other\/everyone\u2019s dad Tom Skerritt sticks her with it while he does Real NASA stuff, like a man. This strikes me as a bizarre set-up and even more of an HR nightmare. \u00a0I mean, astronauts (and potential astronauts) would have a completely different career path over camp counselors. \u00a0I seriously doubt there’s people at NASA who don’t know before Day One of the camp whether they’re training for a mission or going up in space. \u00a0The camp people would just do that, and the astronaut people would show up and wave one day and get back to their regular jobs. Kate Capshaw is, therefore, rightly annoyed, but does her job like a good soldier.\u00a0 Her main team of kids includes the Empty Charmer (Tate Donovan), the Driven Perfectionist (Lea Thompson) the Ditzy Genius (Kelly Preston), the Token Minority (Larry B. Scott) and the Kid (Joaquim Phoenix, back when he was still Leaf Phoenix).<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a>
One of these people will eventually be a three time Oscar nominee. Yeah, I’m shocked too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, I just want to call bullshit on the Kid being in the mix here.\u00a0 There\u2019s some throwaway lines that he\u2019s been at the kiddie camp version of SpaceCamp for three years, and he feels he\u2019s ready for doing the teen one, even though he\u2019s eleven and everyone else is seventeen. \u00a0And he’s gone there enough that Kate knows him on sight<\/em>, which tells me that, no, the camp is her real job and she should accept that. \u00a0Anyhow, after a brief argument Kate Capshaw caves and lets him stay.\u00a0 And\u2026 no.\u00a0 Just no.\u00a0 Camps have age ranges for a reason, largely because on a socialization in age ranges and, you know, vastly different liabilities between handling 11-year-olds over 17-year-olds (or handling them together.) I\u2019ve never seen a camp– at least a professional one– that would not only bend the rules that strongly, but allow a counselor the freedom to do so entirely on her whim without checking with anyone. \u00a0But, hey, this is a place that’s all, “Today you’re running the camp, tomorrow you might be on a shuttle mission”, so who knows.<\/p>\n

Plus there\u2019s the robot, Jinx.\u00a0 Jinx annoys the hell out of me, in that he moves this movie entirely into science-fiction.\u00a0 I mean, yeah, there\u2019s a hell of a lot of implausibility otherwise, but Jinx is a robot with complete sentience and free will.\u00a0 For that matter, the main NASA computer seems to be the same.\u00a0 I\u2019m getting ahead of myself, but\u2026 the kids end up in space because Jinx engineers it.\u00a0 Which he does by talking to the NASA computer, and the two of them come up with a plan and implement it.\u00a0 Seriously, there are scenes where Jinx links up with the computer, and they\u2019re all, \u201cSo, if I can get the kid on the shuttle for an engine test, how can I make the engine test into a launch?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWell, if this happened, then NASA would be forced to launch the shuttle.\u201d \u201cLET\u2019S DO THIS.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 All done by our computer\/robot overlords.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m ahead of myself here: Team Misfit essentially are screw-ups, at least as a team.\u00a0 Mostly because Tate Donovan is named Mission Commander, despite the fact that he only has one fuck to give, and he wants to give it to Lea Thompson.\u00a0 Lea is all \u201cI MUST BE THE BEST AND YOU LOSERS ARE SLOWING ME DOWN\u201d.\u00a0 Kelly Preston really just doesn\u2019t\u2026 anything.\u00a0 Seriously, she doesn\u2019t even get some token \u201cproblem\u201d to overcome.\u00a0 And Larry is just terrible, and works himself into knots over being terrible.\u00a0 The Kid is eleven and has no business being there.\u00a0 Except that\u2019s why we have a plot.<\/p>\n

See, Tate at least has the decency to bond with the Kid, but when Tate gets busted for slipping off campus with Lea, he blames the Kid, even though it was Jinx\u2019s fault.\u00a0 Of course, Jinx is in the dorms because the Kid snuck him in for\u2026 some reason?\u00a0 Anyway, sad over Tate yelling at him, the Kid wishes he was in space, so Jinx decides to make it happen.<\/p>\n

I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH: THE ROBOT DECIDES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.\u00a0 THE ROBOT, IN A MOVIE OTHERWISE PRETENDING TO BE IN THE REALM OF REALISTIC, IN A MOVIE SET AND MADE IN 1986, DECIDES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.<\/p>\n

\"Little<\/a>
Little known fact: “Her” spent decades in development, and the script went through many changes over the years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I can only imagine in some script-doctoring meeting, where they couldn\u2019t figure out how to make the launch happen without it being a real, legitimate ACCIDENT\u2014which totally wouldn\u2019t have played after Challenger\u2014so they were all, \u201cFuck it, a robot does it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there is also an undercurrent of gender politics as Kate Capshaw is totally grinding Lea Thompson down, while letting Tate ride on nothing but a stupid ass grin, which more or less matches her view of what\u2019s going on at NASA.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t even get a mission, while Tom Skerritt\u2019s walked on the moon.<\/p>\n

So, anyway, there\u2019s going to be an engine test of the shuttle Atlantis<\/i>, and they\u2019re going to give one SpaceCamp team the honor of sitting in the shuttle while it happens.\u00a0 Jinx rigs things so the our heroes end up as the selected team, and then while they\u2019re in there, he triggers the THERMAL CURTAIN FAILURE that forces a launch.<\/p>\n

THE ROBOT. \u00a0CAUSES A THERMAL CURTAIN FAILURE.<\/p>\n

So Team Misfit is in space, and NASA is freaking out, and for good reason beyond \u201cWe just put five kids in space.\u201d\u00a0 Because this was just an engine test, so\u00a0Atlantis<\/i> wasn\u2019t space-ready, which means there\u2019s not enough oxygen, and the radio isn\u2019t hooked up.\u00a0All of these contrivances seem VERY convenient, in that they make the plot happen. \u00a0Now, NASA can<\/i> do telemetry stuff to the ship, so they can tell what is going on, but they can\u2019t talk directly to each other. This is stupid, but in slight fairness, they actually make this a plot point rather than a plot hole, in that Kelly Preston figures out if she flicks a switch in Morse code, someone at NASA should be seeing the light flash and figure it out.\u00a0 Unfortunately, she apparently picks the one thing tied to the one console at NASA no one sits at, because no one notices it until nearly the end of the movie, when FUCKING JINX spots it and decodes it before security throws him out.<\/p>\n

This thing with the robot really gets to me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Anyhow, both in the ship and at NASA, they realize the same problem: the ship only has twelve hours of air, and because of \u201clanding windows\u201d they can\u2019t bring the ship back in for fourteen hours.\u00a0 All of this sounds like movie-logic bullshit.\u00a0 I mean, yeah, I\u2019m sure the shuttle can\u2019t just zip into the atmosphere just anywhere in order to land at Edwards Air Force, but the \u201ctwelve hours between windows\u201d sounds like arbitrary movie rules to create a plot problem.\u00a0 Not to mention \u201ctwelve hours of air\u201d is also crazy arbitrary.\u00a0 I mean\u2026 I get they didn\u2019t fully stock it. That\u2019s fine. But there\u2019s a little air-counter display showing the time-count, which means it\u2019s automatically doing the math for how much oxygen one adult woman, four teenagers and one eleven year old are using. \u00a0Of course, when they get a new oxygen canister, it\u2019s also a twelve-hour supply.\u00a0 Which makes me think the filmmakers think oxygen has a static volume-to-usage-time relationship, regardless of how many people are using it.<\/p>\n

My point is, all the time-based numbers feel like they were written without any thought.\u00a0 Especially considering they are, apparently, up in space about 24 hours by the end of the movie, and they never eat or get thirsty, and only the kid ever has to pee the entire time they\u2019re up there.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, both NASA and the crew come up with a solution separately (since they can\u2019t talk to each other: the space-station in progress, Daedalus, has oxygen containers, so they adjust orbit to join up with the station.\u00a0 Problem-solving victory.<\/p>\n

Kate Capshaw takes it upon herself to make the spacewalk to get the oxygen, since she\u2019s the adult in the room.\u00a0 So she suits up and goes out there, but some genius designed the grid that holds the containers so an adult in a space-suit cannot get to them.\u00a0 So they send the kid out with Kate (using Kelly Preston\u2019s very 80s belts to tighten the spacesuit up), and he gets the air containers, and then they almost have a crisis when he nearly flies out into open space.\u00a0 There\u2019s a jokey moment of, \u201cWait until your parents get the bill from NASA for you breaking Daedalus.\u201d\u00a0 Bah.\u00a0 Wait until NASA gets the countersuit for LAUNCHING THEIR CHILD INTO SPACE.<\/p>\n

So the oxygen gets hooked up, and NASA is all, \u201cYeah, let\u2019s take them home.\u201d\u00a0 But while they\u2019re automatically setting that up, Kate Capshaw screws up attaching the second oxygen container, and gets smashed with a flying canister and almost flies off into space.\u00a0 The Kid is trying to reel her in (she\u2019s attached but unconscious) before the doors close, but that isn\u2019t going to happen.\u00a0 So, in the ship, Lea Thompson is FREAKING OUT since she\u2019s supposed to be in charge and can\u2019t figure out what to do.\u00a0 So Tate Donovan steps up, and he overrides NASA so they can save Kate.\u00a0 This leads Lea Thompson to realize she should never ever be in charge of things, and she should just be a pilot.\u00a0 There might be an idea in here about \u201cbook smarts don\u2019t necessarily translate into real world decision-making\u201d, but it comes off more as \u201cgirls can\u2019t be in charge!\u201d and it\u2019s just kind of gross.<\/p>\n

NASA is all, \u201cWhat the fuck just happened?\u201d and doesn\u2019t know what to do, since it\u2019s another twelve hours for another window, or something, and again: not enough air.\u00a0 This window thing makes no fucking sense to me here, frankly.\u00a0 The movie would have worked just as well had they made these things two hours or something.<\/p>\n

The gang on the ship figure out they can land in White Sands as an emergency window\u2014something that NO ONE in the brain trust at NASA can think of, to which again: BULLSHIT.\u00a0 I can\u2019t believe that conversation number one wasn\u2019t, \u201cWhere else can we land these kids?\u201d and that there weren\u2019t fifteen guys in the control room who could rattle off all the emergency window options off the top of their head.<\/p>\n

But no, it takes Jinx coming in and seeing the blinking light and translating the Morse code message for everything to work out.\u00a0 All problems solved, all that\u2019s left is for Lea Thompson to overcome her last crisis-of-conscience so she can land the ship, which involves the video-game like aspect of keeping the ship at a 30\u00b0 angle while they descend. \u00a0Which she does, and the ship lands, and credits roll. \u00a0IMMEDIATELY, right over the stock footage of the landing. Because denouement is for suckers.<\/p>\n

This movie was apparently plagued with production problems, where a two-month shoot ended up taking six months.\u00a0 Somehow after day ONE of shooting, they were already six weeks behind.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how that works, but I think it takes highly advanced levels of screwing up to pull it off.\u00a0 It says something when the disaster told in the movie is less severe than the disaster of the movie itself. \u00a0Despite that, and despite Jinx, there is something engaging about this movie. \u00a0At least, there was for me at the time, but possibly because I was the same age as the Kid. \u00a0That might be why I watched it so many times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there a movie that is more pure, uncut 80s in its essence than Spacecamp?\u00a0 I mean, it’s got a team of Plucky Young Misfits, there\u2019s a cute robot.\u00a0\u00a0 Plus, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1692,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions\/1692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}