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SPACE CADET (2024)

"Funny and Ultimately Uplifting"

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What You Need To Know:

SPACE CADET is a comedy on Amazon Prime. Tiffany “Rex” Simpson is a 28-year-old bartender in Florida who had to forego a full ride to Georgia Tech because her mother became sick and died. At her high school reunion 10 years later, she meets a former classmate who has a billion-dollar space company. He tells Rex that she inspired him. This reawakens Rex’s personal dream to become an astronaut. Rex ends up in NASA’s astronaut training program because her friend replaced Rex’s quirky application letter to NASA with a different letter and a fake resume.

SPACE CADET is funny, endearing and enjoyable. Emma Roberts gives an appealing, spirited performance as the spunky wannabe astronaut. Ultimately, SPACE CADET embraces courage, determination, hard work, teamwork, truth, and risking one’s life to save other people. There’s also a positive reference to God and a pro-American attitude. However, SPACE CADET’s positive moral, redemptive values are mixed with Romantic elements about fulfilling a personal dream. It also has some foul language, lying, alcohol use, and a drug joke. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children.

Content:

(Pa, Ro, BB, C, PP, Fe, Ev, Ho, LL, V, S, AA, DD, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Mixed pagan worldview with Romantic, moral and redemptive elements focuses on young woman’s personal dream of becoming an astronaut and her friend lies to help her and woman later keeps the lie going, but movie ultimately embraces courage, diligence, hard work, truth, teamwork, and risking one’s life to save other people, and heroine overtly wishes her fellow American astronaut trainees “Godspeed,” plus there’s a pro-American and patriotic theme regarding the American astronauts and NASA that also fits in with the movie’s vision of the American Dream where people can pursue happiness and pursue their dreams, plus movie has a light feminist attitude, there’s a reference to evolution and millions of years, and three side characters seem a bit effeminate, one character particularly so;

Foul Language:
11 obscenities (including a few “s” words and the word “Ascan” or “Astronaut Candidate” is made twice into a double entendre joke), 11 light profanities (such as OMG and OG), an “f” word is cut off, and people say “frickin’” several times;

Violence:
Light, sometimes comical and sometimes serious violence includes woman falls down while running on treadmill and treadmill flings her a few feet away, people spin around in centrifuges as part of their astronaut training, woman goes on a dangerous spacewalk to clear some debris off the International Space Station (parts of that perilous trip are slightly comical), astronaut’s spacewalk line gets tangled up in the debris for a moment, woman screams comically when riding a jet plane two times;

Sex:
No sex scenes, but the heroine’s friend is pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby, very brief suggestive dancing in one scene, man in another scene is dancing closely with a taller woman, and his head is resting on her chest, and three side characters seem a bit effeminate, one character particularly so, but nothing is overtly said or indicated about their sex life;

Nudity:
No nudity;

Alcohol Use:
Scenes of alcohol use include one scene where astronaut trainees celebrate at a bar and seem to have drunk a bit too much;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
No tobacco use, but one woman makes a joke about consuming mushrooms with another character; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Significant lying includes heroine helps her father scam tourists by taking them on faked tours of “haunted” places that aren’t really haunted.

More Detail:

SPACE CADET is a comedy on Amazon Prime about a 28-year-old female bartender who ends up in NASA’s astronaut training program because her friend replaced the woman’s quirky application letter to NASA with a different letter and a fake resume. Though not realistic, SPACE CADET is funny and endearing, with an appealing, spirited performance by Emma Roberts, but the movie’s positive moral, redemptive values are mixed with some Romantic elements along with some foul language, lying, alcohol use, and a drug joke.

Tiffany “Rex” Simpson is a 28-year-old bartender in Florida who had to forego a full ride to Georgia Tech because her mother became terminally ill and died. This made her father “a wreck,” so she had to take care of him too and never had a chance to get the engineering degree and pursue her dream of becoming an astronaut.

Ten years later, at her high school reunion, Rex sees a classmate who went on to found a billion-dollar company designed to take tourists into space. He tells Rex that her creativity and commitment to academic work inspired him to found the company.

So, Rex writes a quirky application letter to NASA’s astronaut training program talking about her dream and mentioning her mother. Rex’s friend, Nadine, sees the letter and rewrites it. She also attaches a fake resume to it. To Nadine’s surprise, Rex is approved for the program, but she doesn’t have the heart to tell Rex what happened.

At the training program, Rex is out of her depth when it comes to the academics. However, her roommate in the program, Violet, learns about the fake resume Nadine sent at the same time Rex does. Rex decides to keep the lie going and stay in the program. Violet agrees to keep Rex’s secret if Rex will help her with the exercise part of the program. Meanwhile, Violet agrees to help Rex with the academic part of things.

With Violet’s help, Rex starts to do really well in the training program. Also, she shows strong leadership skills, lots of courage and a selfless commitment to the team.

Meanwhile, the program’s deputy director, a young handsome astronaut with dual citizenship in American and England, starts checking up on Rex’s references. Nadine gets his emails, and she ends up posing as the people behind Rex’s references.

Of course, it’s a recipe for comical disaster. When will Nadine and Rex’s lies get exposed?

SPACE CADET isn’t a realistic movie, but it’s funny, endearing and enjoyable. Emma Roberts gives an appealing, spirited performance as the spunky wannabe astronaut, Rex. He interactions with the cast are a highlight of the movie.

Ultimately, SPACE CADET embraces courage, determination, hard work, teamwork, truth, and risking one’s life to save other people. At one point, the heroine wishes four of her fellow trainees “Godspeed” as they blast off to travel to the Internation Space Station. In addition, the movie has a pro-American, patriotic attitude when it comes to America, NASA and American astronauts. There’s also a moment where the heroine mentions the delicate, complex “balance” in the universe that keeps it going. This could have been a New Agey kind of comment, but the way it plays in the movie is that it promotes the fine tuning of all the elements of the universe. The fine tuning of the universe is one of the best arguments for the existence of the Theistic God of the Bible.

However, these positive elements are mixed with some Romantic elements where the heroine is pursuing her dream of becoming an astronaut. She also later accepts a lie to continue pursuing that dream. Her father later reminds her, though, that her late mother would not have accepted such lying. Earlier, however, she helped her father fake a haunted house during a faked tour to some tourists. Besides the lying, SPACE CADET also has some foul language, alcohol use and a drug joke.

So, although SPACE CADET is a funny feel good comedy with some uplifting, even heartwarming moments, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for older children and adults.