Folks, we've reached the "rom-com but in space" stage of attempting to revive a once-great genre to its former box office glory days. Despite some charming moments, though, Moonshot unfortunately does not deliver on its potential as a bold new future for the modern-day romantic comedy.
Most of the ingredients needed for liftoff are there in this light-hearted sci-fi love story, which is now streaming on HBO Max. There's a solid will-they-won't-they plot device setup (complicated by intergalactic travel, of course), a refreshing genre twist to spice up the old rom-com with otherworldly vistas, and a mostly winning cast of actors that make its brisk hour and forty-five-minute runtime a delight. Zach Braff even delivers an unexpectedly funny enough performance as an egomaniacal Elon Musk type.
But frankly, we need to stop expecting Lana Condor — star of the beloved To All the Boys I've Loved Before trilogy — to keep carrying the rom-com's digital-age revival entirely on her back, though. Playing opposite Gen Z favorite Cole Sprouse, Condor does her best (as does her character Sophie) to make up for yet another mediocre white male counterpart doing the least.
What really makes Moonshot a failure to launch in this new era of romantic comedies, though, is its total lack of imagination.
What really makes Moonshot a failure to launch in this new era of romantic comedies, though, is its total lack of imagination.
It isn't just the movie's underbaked sci-fi setting, either — which throws a quirky Starbucks robot and tinfoil prom dress into what otherwise looks exactly like 2022 before calling it a day. Aside from its subpar genre-bent twist, Moonshot also rehashes the same tired old rom-com formulas. Worse still, those tried-and-tested formulas feel like they've been drawn from only half-finished schematics. So while the movie has an abundance of individually pleasant elements, it's missing a lot of key parts on the whole.
Predominantly centered around starry-eyed yet underachieving college student Walt (Sprouse), the story begins with a false start of a meet-cute. Lacking all the skills needed to join humanity's Mars colony, Walt falls for a girl who inspires him to risk it all for his moonshot (get it?) dream. But those who've seen the movie's trailers or posters already know that this sweet romantic setup is wasted on the wrong girl. In fact, Walt only uses Sophie to smuggle himself onto the Mars-bound spaceship, which she is braving despite a fear of flying in order to reunite with her own lovely boyfriend.
Walt and Sophie are clearly an attempt at the against-all-odds, opposites-attract, hate-to-love romantic comedy pairing. It's a trope that's worked wonders for both classic rom-coms from Pride and Prejudice to 10 Things I Hate About You, and more contemporary counterparts like Bridgerton Season 2.
Yet Moonshot forgets to establish even the most basic narrative friction (from sexual to situational) that's needed to successfully pull off this kind of charged romantic dynamic. Instead, we're just left with what feels like two entirely disconnected, already suitably well-matched main characters whose love interests the script suddenly decides are unsuitable in Act 3. To make matters even more passionless, the reason it doesn't work out with their initial romantic partners is pretty logistical. Their breakups don't have much of anything to do with Walt and Sophie's connection, since they don't really bother to develop one.
So the movie predictably ends with the two getting together, with the most unpredictable twist being that it's out of convenience than any amount of chemistry. I mean, call me a traditionalist, but I just don't consider two people on the rebound (while in space) to be the fairytale future I envision for the modern era rom-com.
Moonshot's unimaginative, half-hearted coupling is only matched by the blandness of its futuristic setting. Even casual fans of the romantic comedy know that a strong sense of place often plays a big role in getting the audience to buy into the story. Whether it's a city, high school, historical period, or a vacation destination, we need to be grounded in relatably familiar settings in order to see ourselves in the genre's unrealistic fairytale romance. But Moonshot's sci-fi surroundings are simultaneously too similar and also too alien to do much of anything for its lackluster narrative.
Honestly, the most futuristic thing about Moonshot is the inescapable feeling that it's a script algorithmically generated by an AI trained on romcoms. The script is fine, for a computer program: It checks almost every box on paper, all while missing that most vital human touch.
Moonshot is now streaming on HBO Max.
