Product Description

All systems are "Go" for Charles Farmer. He's faced bank foreclosure, neighborhood naysayers and a government alarmed by his huge purchase of high-grade fuel, but now he's ready to blast into space inside the homemade rocket he built in his barn. Just be home in time for dinner, Charlie. Billy Bob Thornton portrays Charlie in this charmer about chasing dreams...and about what it means to be a family. 10,000 pounds of rocket fuel alone can't lift Charlie into the heavens. He needs a launch/recovery crew, and he has one of the best: his wife (Virginia Madsen) and children, dreamers all. They have liftoff. Our spirits have uplift. Gravity cannot hold down our dreams. The Astronaut Farmer is that kind of movie.

DVD Features:
Featurette
Outtakes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9826 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-07-10
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 104 minutes

Amazon.com
If you can give The Astronaut Farmer the big, bounding leap of faith it requires, you'll probably enjoy this good-natured film about the importance of holding on to your dreams. The title character (and the dreamer in question) is Charlie Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton), a Texas ranch owner and former aeronautics engineer who's got a homemade rocket in his barn and a dream to blast into space. Even though Charlie's deeply in debt and threatened with foreclosure, his wife (Virginia Madsen) and kids are deeply supportive of Charlie's Earth-orbit mission, even when he attracts the glaring attention of a seasoned Air Force colonel (played by Bruce Willis, in an uncredited role), the FAA, the FBI, and the national media. "If we don't have our dreams, we have nothing," says Charlie at a particularly desperate impasse, and this loopy, offbeat, and unabashedly sentimental drama embraces that message with disarming sincerity.

Suspension of disbelief is a challenge when the movie glosses over so many of its logistical details (like, where does one buy an old NASA space capsule?), and in trying for a kind of Capra-esque, eccentrically Western spin on the American dream, the Polish twins--director Michael and cowriter/actor Mark (making their mainstream debut after such indie hits as Twin Falls, Idaho and Northfork)--are only marginally successful in making Charlie's ambition genuinely believable. The film works much better as a kind of post space-age fable for families, and it's just involving enough to make its climax emotionally rewarding, mostly because Thornton, Madsen, and their costars (including Bruce Dern and Tim Blake Nelson) handle the delicate material with the earnestness it needs to be marginally convincing. Elton John's "Rocket Man" is predictably heard over the closing credits (accordingly, Charlie's launch-time is "zero hours, nine a.m."), and at a time when several adventurous entrepreneurs (including Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos) are gradually developing a civilian space-flight industry, The Astronaut Farmer is an admirable yet forgivably flawed reminder that we should never stop reaching for the stars. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

This is one of the worst films ever made!
The science of this film is completely flawed. From the rocket building, to the descent on land with nothing more than a parachute, surviving multiple orbits of the planet, breathing in space, remaining warm enough inside the cockpit, even down to the homemade space suit. NONE of this is even remotely plausible, and to further insult your intelligence, when the farmer lands he does so within a short drive back to his farm, all without any contact with his makeshift ground control. This film it is pure fiction. But even if you buy into the ultimate white man fantasy premise, the film is still horrible. Scene after scene plays out with predictable, sappy, emotionally charged energy, the acting is fair, but Billy Bob is completely unbelievable as the every day man farmer with his tooth veneers, drop dead stunning wife, and obvious plastic surgery. The script is a mess of schlock, one zinger "How about these flying saucers!" as the farmer's wife throws a plate across the room! As an audience member I felt manipulated by scene after scene desperately trying to get me to give a damn. Instead of crying I found myself laughing at the absurdity of the entire mess.

And for "family values", the message of this film, endanger your families financial well being, put you life on the line, spend hours away from them, just to live out your own unrealistic selfish dream. The farmer literally can barely feed his children and nearly loses all of his assets, including his farm and home, but he isn't going to give up for the sake of his pride. Not really a theme that I want to promote for children.

Even the farmer's house was a hollywood fantasy in that it was large, beautifully decorated, with wrap around porches. I grew up near farms and most farmers live very plainly as they work ALL DAY LONG! They don't have time to build rockets, or match Laura Ashley patterns with their drapes.

The only thing that makes this film worth anything, is the beautiful cinematography. Yes, the camera does capture the beauty of the American heartland, but THAT IS IT! The special effects are an insult to the art form.

Impractical and misleading movie
This movie is about a farmer's fantasy of going in space. This is like those movies in which one person has this obsession with something and whole world is against him. He manages despite the opposition. No matter how ridiculous and dangerous the idea, film writers want the hero to get his way.

This movie has several aspects which are not possible. For example, a rocket blasts off from a wooden barn. Twice. Both the times the rocket leaves flames and smoke behind. But the barn stands unaffected.

In a scene when an official threatens him, the hero asks 'Is it a threat?', the official says 'You are a threat'. I agree with the official's point of view. When first time the rocket fires, it moves through a barrage of journalists.

This kind of thinking that 'I know what I am doing, and it is safe' is not workable. Yes, he has a 350 acre farm and he is doing this experiment away from population. But what if his rocket explodes above a metropolitan area? Such kind of thinking takes care of only happy side, while NASA, which runs a professional organization, thinks about all possible failure scenarios. That is why NASA needs millions.

If the film director was trying to make a point that NASA is a waste of money, and space can be conquered by anyone who has a million dollar, an engineering degree, a large farm, then the director failed miserably in making that point.

I should definitely give credit for showing family unity; support from a wife to her husband's 'crazy idea'; small community support etc. All that makes this movie palpable if one is willing to keep aside pragmatism.

My kids did enjoy it a lot. There are no f words in this movie. Some s words, and some sob words. But other than that the film seems to be clean for family viewing.

One of Billy Bob Thornton's best films since Sling Blade!!! A top "flight" family film!!!
This is a great film,it's about a family man who builds a rocket in his barn and actually gets it to work,yes NASA spends oodles of our tax payers dollars and this guy(Billy Bob)does the same thing for next to nothing using money he raised himself!!! A great family film!!! Kinda think of this film as Field of Dreams with rockets instead of a baseball field!!! One the best newer films i've seen in a long long time!!! There are a few nice extras on the disc too!!! The supporting cast is stellar too,Virginia Madsen,JK Simmons,Bruce Dern,Tim Blake Nelson, and a suprise unbilled appearence by Bruce Willis!also give great performances!!! They don't make many films like these anymore!!! Recommended!!! A+