Review of The Right Stuff (1983) by Ben L — 04 Jul 2017

When I look down the cast list of The Right Stuff I cannot complain at all. Some of my favorite actors are sprinkled throughout this film and they are crushing these performances. Each character is unique and stands out as an individual. It's a huge cast, so some of them don't get a ton of time to make an impression, but I think most of them pull it off. Special recognition goes to Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer for injecting some great moments of humor.

As for the story of The Right Stuff, it is an interesting historical film. It has the feel of a biopic, but it doesn't focus in on one person. Instead it explores the history of the early manned missions into space. It's a topic that I am intrigued by, but I'm not sure it needed to have the entire first section of the film with the test pilots competing for the fastest flight speeds. In fact, the presence of Chuck Yeager as a character was a real mystery to me.

This is a long movie and so on reflection I thought the entire opening act (before the creation of the space program) could have been cut. This is not how I felt when watching it though. It felt like a smart setup because they would establish Yeager and then have him mentor Gordon Cooper, who would then take that knowledge into his astronaut career. But they barely spoke to one another and Gordon Cooper did not become the star of the film. He was there, but shared the spotlight with others.

There were so many things I wanted The Right Stuff to do, I kept having visions of what it could be. I wanted it to center on one character's journey, but it would only do that for a couple scenes and then moved onto the next guy. I thought they had potential to make a big theme out of the way these men would support and help one another through the program, but after touching on it for a moment you don't really see them lifting one another up. The movie didn't even get to the moon landing.

I didn't dislike The Right Stuff at all, there are a ton of high quality elements in it. I didn't get bored or annoyed by the film, even though it was longer than I'd usually like. However, I never felt myself locking into the story. I would watch a segment and hope to see how this was going to tie into the next sequence, but it rarely did. The entire movie felt almost like a TV show because it was a series of short stories all mashed into one film. Not a bad movie, but far from what I hoped it would be.