Movie Review: Moonshot

I learned about Moonshot from an ad for it that popped up on Roku, and I was curious. It was mostly the cast that drew me in. I love the To All the Boys movies, so I'd be excited to watch anything new with Lana Condor, but the fact that Cole Sprouse was also in it piqued by curiosity even more. I haven't watched Cole Sprouse in anything in years (not even Riverdale), but I spent all of middle school obsessed with The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and the idea of the two of them acting opposite each other seemed like a strange enough choice that I wanted to see it for myself.

I wasn't expecting much, but I was curious. I also like both romance and sci-fi, and while those two genres are combined fairly often in books, there are less movies that do that.

While Cole and Lana didn't have the strongest chemistry, they honestly did better opposite each other than I expected. I'm also not sure how much the lack of chemistry was the choice of actors and how much of it was how Cole Sprouse's character was written. He's not particularly charming or anything. He's supposed to be an "average guy" to an extreme, but while average guys can still be interesting characters, this one  wasn't. Even an average guy needs some redeeming qualities, and he didn't really have any.

We're supposed to be rooting for him over the boyfriend (can you tell I don't remember any character names?), but to be honest, I thought she was better with the boyfriend. Don't get me wrong. I get that her and her boyfriend had different visions for their futures, and I completely understand that leading to a breakup. However, the story itself felt like it would have worked better if it worked up to her going back to Earth on her own without another romance in the picture.

One thing that helped me to keep watching was that the movie seemed self-aware about how ridiculous it was to at least a certain extent. There were a few times I laughed out loud, even if it was just because of the ridiculousness, so I'll give it that.

Overall, I don't regret watching the movie. I got some laughs out of it. Will I ever watch it again? Doubtful. But it did make me think about how much I could use more romance movies set in space. It's fairly common in books but less so in movies, which is a shame. I wouldn't mind this one starting a trend. Not that I expect that to happen.