‘Moonshot’ Review: Found in Space
Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor have a meet-cute en route to Mars in the young adult rom-com “Moonshot,” streaming on HBO Max.Christopher Winterbauer’s future-set “Moonshot” is built around a familiar, hard-to-resist premise, most often found in sitcoms but with roots in 1930s screwball comedies: a man and a woman who don’t get along must pretend to be romantically involved for the purpose of an elaborate ruse, the advancement of which gradually brings them closer together until they fall in love for real.The man is Walt (Cole Sprouse), a guileless, accident-prone barista who yearns to visit Mars, and the woman is Sophie (Lana Condor), an anxious Ph.D. candidate en route to Mars herself. When Walt stows away on Sophie’s space shuttle, he assumes the identity of her longtime boyfriend Calvin (Mason Gooding), and manages to embroil her in the deception. The trip to the red planet takes a month. Walt and Sophie have to spend it sharing quarters, keeping up amorous appearances, and (of course) exchanging the kind of witty banter and increasingly lustful glances that in a rom-com are the foundation of any budding relationship.The romance proceeds as it always does in these kinds of movies, with the interstellar setting accounting for little in the way of innovation. That’s OK. It’s a sturdy, versatile trope, no less appealing for being predictable, and with the right balance of flirty antagonism and latent sexual tension, the payoff is certainly satisfying. Sprouse and Condor’s fraught, teasing dynamic — Sprouse the bumbling doofus with rakish charisma, Condor the irritable perfectionist begrudgingly charmed by him — draws out their natural chemistry. Sprouse plays it a touch broad, veering sometimes from endearing to goofy. But Condor is note-perfect, and Winterbauer directs with a light, playful touch, giving the movie an energy that’s nimble and vibrantly sexy.MoonshotRated PG-13 for mild language and sexual innuendo. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More
