Its not a great film, its not really sci-fi (at all), the comedy is gentle and somewhat inconsistent and the drama is slight and does really go very far, but if you get your head round that its actually quite sweet and watchable. The 70s theme just about passes muster, situating it slightly awkwardly as a spoof - which incidentally it isn't - but if you go with it and it makes it kind of nostalgic if somewhat pointless fun....no maybe that's not the right word. Its not fun exactly, but wryly comic in the acquired taste way that you get with Wes Anderson films. For those reviewers who are wondering why it was set in space at all my take would be that the space theme is simply a metaphor for the emotionally isolated souls that might as well live on a spaceship. Yes, spaceship earth written by writers who evidently grew up in the 70s and remember it fondly.
But there are things I really did like about this film. The whole captain tortured by his repressed homosexuality seems like a cliché, but the Patrick Wilson is a genuinely funny presence in the movie. Personally I loved the scene for example when the lonely little girl was seeking out the company of the lonely old (gay) captain only for the latter to shoo her away by subtly waving his cigarette in her face. Liv Tyler isn't funny but she has a gentle watchable persona, and as for the other characters, they're just ordinary people caught up in a very ordinary drama.
You may or may not get anything out of this film. It will depend on age, expectations, sense of humour, and almost certainly mood. If on the other hand you don't see people smoking as a very good running joke then maybe avoid this one.
But there are things I really did like about this film. The whole captain tortured by his repressed homosexuality seems like a cliché, but the Patrick Wilson is a genuinely funny presence in the movie. Personally I loved the scene for example when the lonely little girl was seeking out the company of the lonely old (gay) captain only for the latter to shoo her away by subtly waving his cigarette in her face. Liv Tyler isn't funny but she has a gentle watchable persona, and as for the other characters, they're just ordinary people caught up in a very ordinary drama.
You may or may not get anything out of this film. It will depend on age, expectations, sense of humour, and almost certainly mood. If on the other hand you don't see people smoking as a very good running joke then maybe avoid this one.