I don’t know where Moonshot came from and I’m not sure why it ranks an HBO Max release. It feels like a Disney Channel show or a particularly average Netflix original. But, no, it earns its way onto HBO Max where more ambitious movies have premiered. The film’s devotion to mediocrity is both its theme and its practical reality.

Moonshot is about a near future where Mars is in the process of colonization. Cole Sprouse plays a ball of human mediocrity who applies for a position on the colony and is rejected dozens of time over. Lana Condor plays a very smart person who wants to stay home to heal the Earth but whose boyfriend is already on Mars. Together they will fly to Mars… which… let me check Google for a second… yeah, confirmed. Mars is not the Moon. So… the film’s title is as dumb as the movie.

Yeah, this is a silly, dopy teen romcom about dopy people who would probably explosively decompress the first second they got into orbit. But the movie isn’t about science or scientific realism… it’s a dopy romcom that just so happens to be in space and on Mars. I guess the budget had to go somewhere…

There’s some dopy romcoms that I enjoy… I like Lana Condor in those cute To All the Boys movies just fine. If the film gives us fresh-faced young people with sweet or snappy or funny romantic banter, that can be enough. But… I dunno… I didn’t get any such thing from Sprouse and Condor. I know she’s capable and he’s… I guess too… but they are betrayed by a mediocre script. Nothing feels endearing or sweet. Not in my cynical, grumpy book anyhow.

But there’s a nugget in the film that’s alright. It’s science is bad and it gives us a hero who is dumb as a box of rocks (which is, to this script, a selling point). But, I dunno, there’s something vaguely adventurous in spirit about it (even if it ultimately betrays that spirit in the end). And it’s good natured and harmless.

So, despite myself, I’ll give it a decent-to-mediocre score, but not a bad one. The movie is marginal but somewhat watchable and might appeal greatly to younger folk who look at Cole Sprouse and know what a Cole Sprouse even is.

Score: 71