The Right Stuff

1983 airplane and spaceship movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Traces the advances of flight and the U.S. space program from the time Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier to the training and travels of the Mercury 7 astronauts.

Der Stoff Aus Dem Die Helden Sind is a thoroughly engaging, light-hearted breath of fresh air. There were a lot of ways this material could have been approached. This movie almost fictionalizes the events and characters, and never steers away from an opportunity for a little humor. Instead of inflating the hero aspect, the script makes these pilots and astronauts very very human, and I really liked all the scenes with the bumbling politicians. Their scenes aren't far off from Abbott and Costello routines or an Ionesco play. The scenes with the flights are very realistic without being overly special-effecty, and even though anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of this period of history knows what happens with the characters, they still manage to hold the tension. At six hours and forty-three minutes, this movie is very long, but it's never boring. The music was a bit much a lot of the time, and the sudden narration at the end is weird. Overall, I really enjoyed this very warm look at the Cold War, a movie that puts a human face on the wacky and wild world of space travel. If nothing else, this movie may have inspired me to incorporate horses into my sex life.

Cory always wanted to be an astronaut as a little boy. Or a shark. Watching movies about them was the next best thing. He recommended The Right Stuff.