Goofy ‘Astronaut’ Orbits Around Right Stuff

By Dan Craft;dcraft@pantagraph.com

If you know past Polish Brothers movies – chiefly, “Twin Falls, Idaho” and “Northfork” – then you’re forgiven for anticipating something slightly more bizarre than they deliver in their latest collaboration, “The Astronaut Farmer.”

In the past, the Polish siblings, Mark and Michael, have been content to traverse a quirky regional path that has branded them well-meaning pretenders to the Coen Brothers throne.

In their 1999 debut, “Twin Falls, Idaho,” they starred themselves as Siamese twin brothers, one of whom falls for a hard-luck prostitute, thus creating problems for the other joined at the hip.

Their follow-up, “Northfork” (2003) was also set in Idaho but featured only Mark, who demoted himself to supporting status. The premise involved a small town forced to evacuate itself in order to make way for construction of a new dam – a life-altering exodus that provided grist for ample Coen-esque eccentricity.

The fact the new film sports past Coen players Billy Bob Thornton, Tim Blake Nelson and J.K. Simmons in key roles doesn’t do much to deter the perception that they want to be Joel and Ethan as much as they do Mike and Mark.

Oddly enough, however, “The Astronaut Farmer” is the least Coen- esque of the Polish films to date, sporting a PG rating and clearly pitched toward a general audience demographic.

Still part of the formula, though, is the requisite Polish celebration of the American free spirit along the western frontier, this time via the seemingly crackpot dreams of a Texas rancher who decides to build a rocket in his barn and launch it into space.

This kind of material is fragile stuff, doomed to collapse if just the right tone isn’t achieved as the dream spirals out of control into the kind of all-American nightmare Frank Capra and Preston Sturges used to document with precision.

For the most part, the Polish boys pull it off.

Their dreamer is Charlie Farmer (Thornton), a former NASA astronaut who never made it into space, just like Capra’s George Bailey never made it out of Bedford Falls.

Due to extenuating circumstances, he left the space program to run his 350-acre Texas ranch and play the devoted family man to his wife Audie (supportive Virginia Madsen, currently humoring another problem husband in “The Number 23″) and three kids. They are: teen son Shepard (Max Thieriot), named after ’60s astronaut Alan Shepard, and tow-headed daughters.

Since the latter two are played by the Polish boys’ real-life kids, Logan and Jasper, they quickly become, not surprisingly, the recipients of far too much blatant camera adoration.

Further stretching Charlie’s parenting duties is Audie’s aging, live-in dad, Hal, played by Bruce Dern, who continues to stake a claim to his status as the Walter Brennan of the new millennium.

Meanwhile, out in the barn, there’s Charlie’s homemade Mercury- Atlas rocket, designed after the classic models of the ’60s program. Sure, it’s costing him dearly – to the point of putting him hundreds of thousands of dollar in debt and inspiring precious little sympathy from the local bank’s loan department (straight out of Capra’s Bedford Falls, too).

The government, understandably, becomes concerned after the rocket fuel deliveries start up to the Farmer farm, and the post-9/ 11 specter of a functioning WMD looms large. As might be expected, the Federal Aviation Authority’s head (Simmons) isn’t happy either.

Stubborn idealist that he is, Charlie remains undeterred, even after the FBI and a decidedly Coen-worthy pair of comic-relief Men In Black turn up, played by (it’s still all in the family) Mark Polish and past Polish repertory player Jon Gries (also part of “Napoleon Dynamite’s” Idahoan community).

The locals get up in arms to varying degrees over Charlie’s eccentric behavior. Then the media circus starts.

And then, just to keep the movie’s connections to other movies going, who should show up but Thornton’s “Armageddon” co-star Bruce Willis, playing one of Charlie’s old NASA cronies. He’s in town to both size up the situation out in the barn and offer his own bit of advice to Charlie.

The fact that both men suited up and made it into space without any interference in “Armageddon” bodes well for this one, we assume.

One’s willingness to go along with Charlie’s seemingly impossible dream – yes, kids, you, too can build your own rocket, launching pad and mission control with a little all-American spit and polish (or Polish)! – depends on how credibly the character is sold by the actor.

Needless to say, Thornton can play this kind of down-home individualist with his eyes shut. And his Charlie Farmer ends up transcending some of the more indefensible and/or inexplicable aspects of his behavior (for starters, risking the family farm while periodically endangering the lives of himself, loved ones, and any neighbor in the rocket’s launch path).

Because of that, when the big moment finally comes, all systems are go. And the Polish Brothers walk a pretty straight line from there on out, smack into Elton John’s “Rocket Man” bringing up the end credits.

Toto, we’re not in Idaho anymore.

(c) 2007 Pantagraph. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.