Unfortunate title syndrome: Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff

 Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward, Sam Shepherd, Barbara Hershey, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum. Dir. Phillip Kaufman, Warner Bros., 1983

I'm told I saw the Moon Shot. A year and nine months old that night in August 1969, I don't remember watching Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the lunar surface. I do remenber seeing the last couple Appollo launches and splashdowns and understanding, even at that young age, what astronauts were, what NASA was, etc. What I didn't have until a few years later was the sense of wonder at the scale of achievement. In 100,000 years of human history, the moon had been a divinity, an old man, goddess of the hunt and harvest, enabler of lycanthropy and monthly lunacy. Then, in fewer than 20 years, one country decided to put men on the moon and did that. Almost two years after my birth. The space program, NASA, the Mercury and Apollo astronauts, the Moon Shot - that's where my sense of wonder begins. I'm not any kind of NASA-fanboy, but like many I know around my age I am always fascinated by what we're doing in space, and tend to hold the original astronauts and test pilots, even the goofy ones, in something like awe.

All of which is to say I've a tendency, on first viewing, to view films connected to the early days of the space program uncritically and to admire them perhaps more than they merit. Ron Howard's Apollo 11 played great in the theatre but I've struggled to get through it again. The Right Stuff, kind of a big deal movie back in the early '80s, the film version of Tom Wolfe's bestseller, nominated for a mess of Oscars, kickstarter of Chuck Yeager's late-life career as a celebrity endorser, and reminder of the original pilots' heroism, got the same reception on its first two viewings, both of which were at least 20 years ago. This time around, I'm a guy who sees too many movies to be that romantic on viewing #3.

The Right Stuff, despite its media footprint in '83, lost a fair amount of money at the box office and, while multiply nominated, met the usual fate of a box office loser on Oscar Night. As much as I admire the Mercury astronauts, as much as that chapter of our nation's recent history swells me with pride, The Right Stuff probably failed in theatres because it's overlong, slow, a film that wants to be a character-driven ensemble piece but has to also deliver a great deal of historical fact and exposition, a difficult balance, and Philip Kaufman's rewrite of William Goldman's screenplay never finds it.

The trick of Wolfe's book is to demonstrate that the original test-pilot culture inspired and invigorated the early space program, that the Mercury astronauts were heroic for who they were and what they did despite the disdain and disrespect shown them, and particularly their families, by our government. Wolfe managed to myth-make and lampoon in one account. Kaufman, having failed to pursuade Wolfe to write his own screenplay, attempted to replicate Wolfe's accomplishment, but isn't the writer to do it, despite being the screenwriter of one of my favorite westerns, The Outlaw Josey Wales.

It's a shame, because United Artists assembled and paid for as deep a bench as an '80s Oscar-bait historical epic could hope for. Some of the principals have had their own Oscar-moments in the years since The Right Stuff, and all have done great work since then, but they're struggling to do it here, some of America's best actors finding the portrayal of some of the most colorful characters in US history difficult. That's a writing problem.

Casting is a problem, too, however. I love Ed Harris, and in '83 he certainly had the golden charisma Glenn did, but even in Harris's lesser work he's best when, like John Wayne, he shows an inner tension always on the verge of mestastasizing into rage. He tries to do it here, too, but it's impossible to reconcile mild-mannered US Sen. John Glenn, D-Oh., as a smouldering volcano of wrath, regardless of the government's mismanagement. I buy him as the eager Boy Scout, not as much as the defiant bureaucracy-fighter. I did like Fred Ward's performance as "Gus" Grissom. Ward specializes in playing a kind of rough-hewn, crude man at the surface who has more going on inside and that works for Grissom, the seeming womanizer who can't assuage his wife's pain when his medal is awarded under a cloud. Scott Glenn's performance reminded me of a Yugo. Fine for awhile, then not, then ok, then not, fits and starts. I do give Dennis Quaid full marks on his southern twang - he sounds like he and An Officer and a Gentleman's David Keith roomed together for six months. Quaid brings his usual energy to the role of Gordon Cooper, but the overall film's too moribund for it to find anything off which to bounce.

Kaufman gives even shorter shrift to the women, some of the better female actors then working, including Veronica Cartwright and Pamela Reed, neither of whom has much to do other than be "the wife." Zooey and Emily Deschanel's mom, Mary Jo Deschanel, is great, however, as Annie Glenn, whose speech impediment made her a less-desirable figure in the life of their golden boy, Glenn.

The Right Stuff kind of works, much like that Yugo. Parts fire on all cylinders. Other parts feel as if the viewer's pushing the movie until he can kickstart it going downhill. Everything involving Sam Shepherd as Chuck Yeager, who bookends the movie and appears throughout, almost its soul, in a way, is something no Yugo ever had - cruise control. Shepherd's magnificent as the stoic hellraiser snubbed for the Mercury program because he didn't go to college. His scenes with Barbara Hershey, as his independent, determined wife, give the movie much-needed life.

The Right Stuff's final problem has nothing to do with its own failings or virtues. It's me. The movie may be a little ponderous, may feature some misfired performances, may not be quite as interesting as its subject, but its subject is the first Americans in space, and I cheer for them, in real life and in not-quite-amazing movies. When Yeager breaks the sound barrier in the film's first few minutes, I feel exhilarated. I'm engaged, even when the picture struggles to. I don't love The Right Stuff, though I wish I did. I like it, though, more than it really deserves. I'll watch it again, though probably not soon. Who knows - next time 'round it might seem better. It was good before. Maybe it could be again.