Two stars for the special effects. Great film for insomniacs. Started well but ultimately disappointing storyline.

"Ad Astra" starts out well, but it deteriorates as it goes along, and absolutely nothing about the last half hour or so of the movie works at all.

The narrative doesn't work, the acting doesn't work, the science doesn't work. Brad Pitt isn't a terrible actor, but he's limited, and he's certainly not good enough to carry off a movie like this, despite the fact that there is near-constant voice over just telling us what his character is thinking. The film I guess looks nice, but there's nothing in this you haven't already seen in films like "Gravity" or "First Man." There's a droning, monotonous tone to the whole thing that makes it feel very long.

And that ending. Ooof. The whole movie builds up to a confrontation between Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, playing his long-lost dad, but both actors play the scene like next-door neighbors who run into each other in the alley and discuss whether or not they should go get some pizza. There's some psycho-babble about whether or not Pitt should let his dad go, figuratively and literally, before the film's most preposterous plot device that involves a nuclear explosion propelling Pitt's spaceship all the way from Neptune back to Earth. Or at least, I think that's what happened.

I'll give this film some points for trying to be a movie for adults, a rare find these days, but I'd like some movies that are both for adults AND good.

And what the heck was with the killer monkeys? I kept waiting for that scene to plug into the bigger picture of what was going on but it never did.

Grade: C

The first thing you find out in this movie is that the inverse square law does not apply. Yes, that's right. Someone is sending some kind of force from out near Neptune all the way to Earth, and, I kid you not, it gets stronger as it travels. Nothing in the universe does that. Nothing. And we're off to the races with total, monumental scientific illiteracy. A structure that reaches from the surface of the Earth into space serves as an antenna. On the moon, the transition from the near side to the far side of the moon is a sharp line between sunlight and darkness. Guess what: The far side is commonly called "the dark side" because it's not visible from the Earth, not because it doesn't get sunlight. A lunar rover goes flying over the edge of a crater, spinning, and lands on its wheels and keeps on going. It takes 19 days to get to Mars. It takes a further 79 days to go to Neptune. Yet, at what must be monumentally high speeds, they can still slow down, stop along the way to battle evil baboons, and get going again.

But all that is not half as bad as the monumental boringness and pointlessness of the story. The dialog (and Pitt voiceover monologues) are very pedestrian blather about things that we are supposed to care about except that there is no context or world-building that might make it matter to an audience. The climactic conversation between mopey son and loony father must have been written by a 9th grade creative writing student.

There are so many things wrong, I can only pick a few at random -- Why is this Earth-saving mission being entrusted to a crew of freight jockeys? Why does Pitt have to go to Mars in order to record and send a (laser) message to Daddy? Can't do that from Earth? Or the moon? Why go to the moon at all? Or Mars? No reason that I can discern. What are pirates doing on the moon? USA forces can't manage to get from one moon base to another without protecting themselves from pirates? Huh? Really? Why is Donald Sutherland in this movie? His character does exactly one thing (besides giving Pitt old man speeches) -- he gives Pitt his secret passkey for something or other. Oy.