I liked the premise for The Space Between Us, which tells the tale of a teenage boy born and raised on a Martian settlement who travels to Earth to see how the rest of humanity lives.  It’s an intriguing fish-out-of-water allegory that could, properly employed, use its perspective to make some great points about the life we too often take for granted.  Then I saw the film, which is sadly misguided and wastes every good opportunity the premise promises.

Peter Chelsom’s film goes off the rails pretty quickly, because it doesn’t respect its own structure.  It posits a crew of six for a long Mars mission — five men and one woman, the commander.  Sure enough, she turns out to be pregnant, giving birth soon after they reach Mars, thus delivering the first true Martian human.  Gardner Elliott (Asa Butterfield) remains on Mars for sixteen years — in secret!!!! — until he sneaks back to Earth aboard a resupply ship.  Gardner cavorts around Earth with a girl meets online, Tulsa (Britt Robertson), staying one step ahead of the NASA scientists chasing him as he searches for the father he has never known.  What?

The idea that a baby could be born on Mars and be kept secret for sixteen days, much less sixteen years, is lunacy.  Not with international coverage of the voyage and the settlement, not to mention the later missions that introduce new astronauts and take others home.  There is absolutely no chance that a secret birth would be kept secret for long.  Secrecy is an issue on Earth, too — nobody seems to question why NASA scientists Gary Oldman and Carla Gugino are chasing two teenagers across the west in a helicopter.  The whole setup is patently ridiculous.

Then there’s Tulsa, the girl who Gardner gets to know online (from Mars!, where he’s supposed to be secret!).  A teenager herself, she helps Gardner evade the police by stealing cars, flying biplanes, shoplifting clothes and gradually starting to believe his wild story.  I guess she is supposed to appeal to a young audience, but to have her be such a blatant criminal with a hellish home life just doesn’t seem to be the right tone for such a story.  Britt Robertson, who plays Tulsa, is now 26, playing 17 rather unconvincingly.  She also played a troubled teenager in the recent Tomorrowland, which is almost as bad as this film; she needs to choose better scripts or find a better agent.

The film tries to provide twists near the end involving the identity of Gardner’s father, but it’s pretty obvious early on who that is.  The best thing is that most of these silly, stupid and criminal characters ends up back on Mars, away from the rest of us, with Tulsa going into astronaut training so she can soon join her new boyfriend in space.  For anyone who appreciates the space program and supports our efforts to explore the great beyond, this film is a jarring slap in the face.  Even Armageddon is better than this crap.  ☆.  16 February 2017.