Red Rover is as escapist as escapism gets, and I’m not even talking about the half-baked ‘let’s got to Mars’ premise. Damon Pierce (Kristian Bruun) is an ersatz Jack Black spineless pushover who lives in his ex-girlfriend’s basement (where he’s subjected to the sights and sounds of her sex life) and is fired from his job at the start of the movie.
Instead of asserting himself, Damon decides to pursue a second career as an astronaut. I’m not saying that growing a pair is easy, but it is a more realistic choice for your average chubby geologist.
Except it isn’t in this film. The Red Rover mission is “looking for strong and intelligent applicants” for “a one-way trip” to the red planet. “In round 1, all candidates must complete an online application … that explains why we should choose you … In round 2, only 20 applicants who pass a rigorous interview and vetting process … will live together in one of our replica space stations, competing in various training challenges broadcast to a global audience … In our final round, only four participants will be selected for the first human mission to Mars … Those going won’t be coming back.”
Basically, it’s the “Deep Space Homer” episode of the Simpsons, only it’s nowhere near as funny nor does it make as much sense. “The technology has evolved. It is not a matter of how. It’s only a question of when. And really, the only question that truly remains is who.”
Uh, why would that be a question? Have we run out of The Right Stuff? I don’t know who exactly is supposed to be behind Red Rover, but to put it in perspective, even whackjob Elon Musk’s SpaceX uses NASA astronauts.
And speaking of whackjobs, I understand that the concept of a Mars to Stay mission has an intrinsic potential to attract misfit sad sacks like Damon — which is why you should be weeding them out, not encouraging them to join a reality TV popularity contest. Maladjusted rejects should stay rejected, and if you’re just trying to get rid of them, send them to the Sun, not Mars.
Not that it matters, though. Damon changes his mind so that he can remain on Earth and emotionally hijack Phoebe (Cara Gee), a woman he barely knows — mainly because he just met her —, and who is just not that into him.
If the Mars thing is half-baked, the romantic stuff has never even seen the inside of an oven. The notion that becoming involved in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship (and I bring up the heterosexual part only because this is a textbook example of a guy putting the pussy on a pedestal) is the magical solution to all of life’s problems is only slightly less naive than the prospect of taking your ball and going home, with ‘home’ being Mars.
This is especially true because there really is no relationship to speak of. Damon and Phoebe meet cute, she helps him with his application, they go on a sort of date, have a one-night stand (the best kind of stand), and then she makes it brutally clear that she’s way out of his league and wants nothing serious with him: “I’m a fantasy. I’m like Mars. A distraction from your ex.”
Saddest of all is that she is. If I may get away with another Simpsons reference, Phoebe is not unlike Don Vittorio DiMaggio (“You have brought great joy to this old Italian stereotype”); that is to say, she’s nothing more than a Manic Pixie Dream Girl — a grown-ass woman who walks around in public wearing an astronaut costume for no other reason than co-writer/director Shane Belcourt thought that a quirky trait is an acceptable substitute for a personality (Phoebe is also a singer/songwriter, but then aren’t they all?).
Damon must be a masochist to want to give up his lifelong days-long pipe dream for this (admittedly cute) bitch who shot him down with extreme prejudice; of course, if he were a masochist he never would have had that dream in the first place — so what the hell is he, anyway?
Then again, there’s a lid for every pot, as they say in the parlance of our times. Phoebe allows herself to be bamboozled by this flip-flopper who, if you pay attention, is not even sacrificing a trip to Mars for her (Damon made the group of 20; whether he would have reached the final four, we’ll never know).
Moreover, he gives Phoebe the geologist version of the old ‘You Had Me at Hello’ trick, and she actually falls for it: “You’ve changed everything about me. My fault lines and my fractures. Like they’ve all eroded and calcified. Everything has changed, because of you.”
Surely that’s code for ‘you let me sleep with you;’ otherwise, I don’t have the slightest fucking idea what the hell Damon’s babbling about. When and how did Phoebe effect this? And in what way is Damon different now? He seems as clingy toward Phoebe now as he ever was to his ex, simply substituting one for the other.
Were the scenes depicting this alleged transformation, including the means by which Phoebe brought it about (and I’m not counting mercy fucking Damon, hardly a life-altering experience), shot and cut out? Written but never shot? Never written but tacitly assumed by the filmmakers to take place offscreen? None of the above? I’m reminded of the ending of Garden State, and that’s not good.
All things considered, every major decision that Damon makes, he makes for the wrong reasons — either out of spite or lust/loneliness (“we were sad and desperate,” as Phoebe rightly puts it). If you want us to respect the protagonist, he must have some self-respect, and self-love, and a sense of self-worth.
He doesn’t have to have any of those things to begin with, but he had better gain them as he goes along; either way, the answer must lie within him. You can’t go through life hoping something or someone will change you. The change must come from inside; if it doesn’t, you’ll always be miserable wherever you go and whomever you’re with — but if it does, you could be bounded in a nutshell and count yourself a king of infinite space.
Even if Damon and Phoebe had anything in common (chemistry in particular comes to mind), even if they had a solid base for a relationship, who’s to say it’s going to last? Who’s to say it’s not going to end badly and leave him more fucked up than he was before? What’s he going to do then? ‘Oh wait, I want to go to Mars after all wah wah wah.’ Fuck that.
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