Crater is a Disney+ film set on Earth’s moon which is just a fueling station for folk traveling to Earth’s richer and more abundant colony. A group of moon kids decide to steal a rover and cruise over to an off-limits crater so one of them can say goodbye to his father who died in the lunar mines.

This is a decently enjoyable adventure film for tweens and early teens… and maybe older folk too. I liked it well enough. It has some interesting worldbuilding with some intriguing themes. The kids are good enough actors and the visuals largely work.

I want to take a pause to gripe about that science in an eye-rolling, pedantic way before letting it slide (this is just a Disney+ movie for kids, right?) For example… they depict the moon’s lower gravity only effecting anyone when outside on moonwalks. Regular Earth gravity is in play indoors. Maybe they have Star Trek’s gravity plating? Also… they take a moonwalk and leave the door to their rover wide open. Earth to Moon Kids: lunar dust is course, it’s rough, it’s irritating and it gets EVERYWHERE.

Ahem. Anyhow, the film’s ultimate reveal of what’s at the crater is a bit of a dud and it has a kind of a slow-paced finale. But it’s final scenes weren’t nearly as sappy as I thought they were going to be. In fact, they were gentle and bittersweet while playing with the relativity of space travel and its consequences.

The film has interesting worldbuilding around the corporations that run the lunar base. The kids feel betrayed as they learn more about their little world and realize they’ve been sold a lie. I like that it’s a theme that doesn’t overpower the movie.

Overall, this is a fine sci-fi adventure flick for teens. It may get under the skin of hard sci-fi fans who can’t let the bad science go… but those more forgiving will be ok with it. I liked that it had ideas told through pretty good worldbuilding and themes. It’s pretty decent.

Score: 75