ROCKETMAN

Reminiscent of the 1960s, silly, lightweight Disney comedies are trying to make a comeback with the movie ROCKETMAN, starring Harland Williams, as Fred Z. Randall. The movie opens with Fred as a little boy sitting in his mother’s clothes dryer and imagining that he is blasting off to outer space. Of course, the dryer starts, and his mother has to rescue him. [Little children should be cautioned not try this stunt.]

23-years later, a NASA team prepares for the first manned mission to Mars, but their preparations have hit a snag in that the manned simulator keeps deviating from the appropriate flight path and crashing into a virtual model of the hostile planet. Therefore, the mission controller, Paul Wick (Jeffrey DeMunn), takes the commander, “Wild Bill” Overbeck (William Sadler), and the navigator to meet with the software designer, Fred Randall, so they can investigate a possible mission software design flaw.

Grown-up Fred is a bumbling, inept computer geek. Not even noticing his visitors, he starts his work day by energetically playing a simplistic computer space game. When he realizes that these important NASA officials are in his room, he is embarrassed. Looking at the mission data, Fred says that the navigator made a critical mathematical error. The navigator refuses to accept this prognosis from a “geek,” and so Fred has the navigator simulate his flight path on Fred’s computer. Regrettably, Fred has rigged his computer so that it operates an erector set model of the space capsule which hits and severely hurts the navigator as he repeats his landing error.

Thus, NASA needs to find another navigator with only a few weeks left before the mission. Evidently, the mission has only a brief window to land on Mars before the famous Martian dust storms consume the landing location. NASA tries out two replacement navigators: the trained back-up member of the team, and bumbling Fred Randall.

In spite of his slapstick mistakes, Fred seems to pass all the tests with flying colors and literally knocks out his competition. Regrettably, whenever he wreaks havoc with one of his silly stunts, he immediately claims that he didn’t do it and invents outlandish lies to cover his mistakes, just as if he had the emotional maturity of a 7-year-old.

Even so, he gets chosen for the mission, and the three astronauts, including the attractive Julie Ford (Jessica Lundy), Commander Wild Bill Overbeck and Fred, head off to Mars with a chimp sidekick, whose mission is to gather rock samples from the caves on Mars. Throughout the space voyage, Fred entertains us with silly mishaps and stunts, until he finally saves the day during an unexpected Martian storm. In the process of rescuing the commander, Fred even learns to accept responsibility and tell the truth.

There are some very funny, silly moments in ROCKETMAN. The humor is much cleaner than most of the contemporary comedies of its sort, with only two scatological references. The sexual innuendo is practically non-existent, although Fred is romantically attracted to Julia, but their romance is chaste, wholesome and above-board. Regrettably, the movie stalls several times as it switches gears from a “man vs. himself” plot, where Fred tries to overcome his shortcomings, to a “man vs. man” plot, where Fred and “Wild Bill” are locked in humorous conflict, and finally to a “man vs. nature” plot, where the beleaguered astronauts try to escape the hostile environment of Mars.

From the beginning, the jeopardy is very light. My two younger children knew that nobody was going to get hurt and enjoyed the silly humor immensely. My teenager, however, thought that the movie was too childish. Thus, it seems as if the lack of depth, insight, drama, jeopardy, and dialogue may limit this comedy’s potential audience. Its audience will be further limited by the Disney boycott − after all, who else would go to this movie except for moral families who want to see a clean wholesome comedy?

Harland Williams is a good comedian. Too bad the script didn’t measure up to his abilities.