Fate of a film can at times be decided by events beyond creators’ control and imagination. One of the more spectacular and macabre examples happened in 1986 with SpaceCamp, science fiction adventure comedy directed by Harry Winer.
Although the basic premise might be far-fetched, the film is actually inspired by real life educational institution known as Space Camp, designed to teach avionics, robotics and various astronautics-related skills to aspiring children and teenagers. Its fictional version, situated at NASA Kennedy Space Center, is main setting of the film and protagonist is group of teenagers that attend the camp – ambitious Kathryn Fairly (played by Lea Thompson), arrogant Kevin Donaldson (played by Tate Donovan), African American nerd Rudy Tyler (played by Larry B. Scott) and seemingly airhead Tish Ambrose (played by Kelly Preston) – and are joined by highly intelligent 12-year old Max Graham (played by Joaquin Phoenix in first role, credited as “Leaf Phoenix”). Max is obsessed with Star Wars and has developed something of a friendship with Jinx (voice by Frank Welker), apparently sentient robot that sees his wish to actually to go to space as command. Opportunity for that comes when Max and the rest of group, under supervision of instructor Andie Bergstrom (played by Kate Capshaw), have the honour of visiting Space Shuttle Atlantis during routine engine test. Jinx manipulates NASA mainframe computer into activating boosters thus forcing mission control to activate another and actually launch the spaceship in the orbit. Andie’s class, however, don’t have much time to actually savour zero gravity and sight of Earth from orbit. Their oxygen supplies are limited and they must find the way to quickly bring Atlantis home.
During the production SpaceCamp looked like a perfect combination of ingredients for successful summer blockbuster – family-friendly adventure plot, cast made of attractive young actors some of whom made their name in hit teen films, mixing of sentimentality with mild humour, solid special effects and musical score by always reliable John Williams that made the film sound Spielbergian. Film, made with actually help of NASA, was also design to celebrate American technological supremacy, a task very important with Cold War still going on. However, few months before premiere American and global TV audience saw real life spectacle much more macabre than Hollywood film – Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after take-off taking the lives of seven astronauts, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, character in many ways similar to protagonists of the film. The audience simply couldn’t accept Hollywood fantasy that was so similar yet so tragically different from real life and the film, already named as “PR nightmare”, consequently crashed at the box office with critics being mostly hostile.
Seen today, without its traumatic historical context, SpaceCamp looks like uninspired, but mostly solid piece of Hollywood entertainment. There is actually very little chauvinistic chest-thumping which was common for American films at the time and the film mostly succeeds in promoting science and positive messages of self-reliance, discipline and co-operation. The acting is, despite character often being one-dimensional, quite adequate and the cast – whether made of already popular names like Preston, Capshaw and Thompson or future stars like Donovan and Phoenix – does its job admirably. Even Terry O’Quinn, one of the best character actors of our times, makes good impression in the role of NASA mission controller. The scenes in the orbit also feature relatively primitive, but effective way of mimicing zero gravity. On the other hand, plot resolves rather predictably and nothing in the film is surprising even for less experienced cinephiles. Use of “cute” and unrealistically sentient robot, obviously introduced by producers ad studio in order to help with toys and film-related merchandise, looks too manipulative. Yet, SpaceCamp is entertaining enough and those viewers who give it a chance won’t have too many reasons to regret their decision.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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