Emma Robert’s press tour for this was a nightmare. It’s never good to go out and talk about how film criticism has devolved before your film comes out, because it hasn’t. There are just more film critics. I can promise Emma, that if we went back to the simpler times, with eight critics as she remembers (which never happened in her lifetime), her Rotten Tomato score would still be zero. I look at this, and I wonder what Emma saw in it to defend it so much.

The movie is based around a young woman (Robert’s) who once was super smart, and headed off to college to do big things. She dreamed of being an astronaut, but her mother got sick, she deferred, her mom died, and she never went to college. She stayed to help her dad, and picked up a best friend trying really hard to move in on the roles that Sherry Cola is turning down. At a party, she runs into an old classmate who is now a billionaire with his own space program, and he used to crush on her, and he was her inspiration. Using that as fuel, she applies randomly to NASA, meeting zero requirements. Her friend redoes the entire thing before submitting it, so she looks like she’s achieved a ton of things. Because the film needs her to get in, she does, and background checks happen while astronauts are in training. I’m serious.

The problem is, that we never see that smart Robert’s. We see a party girl, who seems to have gotten all the way down to the basics. There’s nothing really wrong with this, but if you are going to do the fish out of water thing, you can either put your big girl pants on and Legally Blonde your way through a more grown up film where your character works hard and makes a clear transformation, or you can do it more of the family film way, where we accept this is made for families, and not to be taken too seriously. That PG-13 rating, and the drinking, make that a hard sell.

Space Cadet needed to be smarter, or cleaned up for a younger demographic. Robert’s likely was a few cuts from having a film that would play well to families like a lost 90’s live action Disney film. Back then, we didn’t ask questions. Black Check? Sure. A kid can work for a grown man no one can ever see, and conveniently hide from gangsters. That makes total sense. Disney even had a film called Rocketman, which follows a lot of the same beats as Space Cadet, but never required comedian Harland Williams to get smarter.

Where this film is, it just doesn’t work. No one would do background checks this late. she’s literally flying a fighter jet when she’s found out. they are down to the final four. That’s how far she makes it. Of course, the movie finds a reason to still get her to space, because of course it does, but it all felt really dumb. It isn’t the worst film, and it would have been more easy to accept if I thought the target audience was a 10-year old. But it isn’t. I love Emma Robert’s, I thought she was excellent in Scream 4, and I will keep looking forward to her films, but this should not be her Waterloo.

What I Look For In The Audio Description: There’s a wide and diverse cast of candidates, or as scans, that should be described so we can get to know them better, since it is a little hard to predict who the final four will be. The various space tests, plus the little bit of time in space should be a focus. It is basically the whole point. Plus, her best friend spends a lot of time pretending to be other people to validate her mistake.

What It Does: The character descriptions could be better, as could the actual astronaut stuff. However, all the various things her friend does are one of the funnier things about the film, and those were well described. It isn’t a bad track, but it could have been better. I definitely would have increased the moment actually in space, because it is so underdescribed it made me wonder if Amazon paid for anything to look like space at all.

Final Thoughts: While not Emma’s strongest film, I am a fan. She is likeable here, but her character could be described much better, and in greater detail. Gabrielle Union is in this for some reason, but her casting is so bizarre, and she’s so poorly utilized I didn’t even really figure it was worth mentioning. this script is so bad, it leaves the picking of an entire set of trainees to just two people. Why? Because hiring more actors is expensive. I’m sure of that. This is so minimalist, I’m surprised they got a plane in the film, or even simulated a space launch.As a blind person, I can’t speak to the visual quality, but I suspect we are all being bamboozled. And to satisfy Emma’s craving for the criticism of yore, I’ll give it one thumb down.

Final Grade: C