Ad Astra, directed by James Gray and starring Brad Pitt, is a full-on snooze fest. The premise of the story is how an astronaut’s father, who is presumed dead, might actually be alive out in deep space near Neptune. The two-hour film could have been made in an hour if not for the slow-moving scenes that didn’t need to be there.

The film used beautiful cinematography for an in-space effect, as well as amazing costuming. Yet, the film was supposed to seem futuristic and there was almost nothing that made the audience believe that it was, other than availability of commercial flights to the moon, and how Brad Pitt’s character, Roy, arrived on the moon and it just looked like a normal airport.

This film is an embarrassing follow up to the 2013 film starring Sandra Bullock, Gravity, except in Gravity there were many heart racing scenes where oxygen was a necessity that was draining quite fast. In Ad Astra, there always seemed to be an endless supply of it, even out in space for about thirty years with a broken ship.

Moreover, Roy didn’t interact with many people, which made the film have way too much voice over. Voiceover is a good source of exposition for many films, so the audience can really know the character, but it can’t be done cinematically. This film relied on voiceover because every character Roy came into contact with didn’t add to the plotline as well as they probably should have.

Along with that, this was definitely not one of Brad Pitt’s best performances. He remained monotone throughout the film. This was for plot reasons, as he had to pass his psych evaluation, he needed a heartbeat that was under 100 BPM and had to give answers that don’t show too much emotion. In the film, doing so could sever his chance to find his father. This was a strange addition to the film, because even if he didn’t pass, that did not stop him from doing what he wanted. It just made the film go extremely slowly, and the only way the audience actually knew what he was feeling was with voiceover. This film would have worked a lot better as a book than a film.

There are many space adventure films that are high adrenaline, and if that is what you are looking for in a film, I do not recommend this film to you.

This does give a vibe similar to that of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick’s film goes very slow, you almost get to the point where you begin yelling at the screen to go faster. Ad Astra wasn’t quite that slow, but because there really wasn’t much character development in Roy, the film was just plain flat and really hard to follow, besides the few words at the beginning of the film stating that this is set in the future, the audience really doesn’t get any context as to what is going on and why the space exploration is so important.

I do not recommend this film. I give it a 1/5. It is cinematically beautiful, but that is about it.