The Cosmonaut (2013 film)

[SavannahLion]

I really and truly tried with this one. Film is supposed to clock in at about 90 minutes. I watched between 15 and 20 minutes of it.

The premise is great. A lost cosmonaut returns after 7 months in space. Upon his return, Earth is still here but all the people are missing. ---smurfing--- awesome! I love this kind of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---!

Yeah.... first thing that sprung to the surface is the artistic use of film. Blue hue early on contrasted with err... yellow and grayish? Seems the producer/director abandoned the color scheme early on. It's like they saw The Matrix and Blue and decided to experiment with it then got bored.... seriously,  this is a film that desperately needs tone hints because.....

The damn film jumps around worse than Jumping Jackrabbit. No scene taking more than 2 or three minutes at most. You have flashbacks, parallel scenes, and what's this? Dream sequences? That's four, possibly five, threaded plot lines and very little to distinguish between them.

That's OK. As the film tries to weave the intertwining stories of three primary characters you'll find your mind wandering. Have a smart phone? Use it, you're not going to miss anything. You'll learn this movie was crowd sourced (I can't decide if I dislike that phrase), then you'll find this link about the Lost Cosmonauts by the conspiracy theorists. That alone should be interesting enough for 15 minutes. You won't miss much because nothing ---smurfing--- happened. Four stories means you missed all of 3 minutes and 45 seconds of any one thread.

Considering how sluggish this film actually moves that translates to five minutes of anything remotely interesting, when the ship is ---fouled up beyond all recognition--- and the Cosmonaut says "my Solar Panels are damaged and unless I can find a gas station on the way home....." wait... what? Russia started using solar panels in the mid 70's but the movie starts off in '57... oh wait that was '76... but how did the guy from '57 listen in.... why is the introduction in Italian and the Russians speak English with a British accent?

Eventually,  I realized I didn't care.

My advice? Don't bother. This film rates a 20% at best. 5% to 10% once you factor in the time spent browsing the internet. It's not an action film, nor is it a proper love flick. The science is ass so it's not SciFi or SciFa. Might be a ghost flick, but who are the damn ghosts? The movie might clear itself up towards the end but why waste the time? If you come across this movie. Watch the first ten minutes then fast forward to the last ten minutes, That should cover the film plot. Otherwise just find a plot summary from someone who actually watched it to the end.