'The Space Between Us' Is A True Mash-Up Of Genres

The trailer creates an intriguing picture: a boy is born on Mars, lives there for more than a decade, falls in love via video chat and is determined to return to Earth in order to be with the girl he's met there. A twist on the standard romance: teens + space!

However, when the story gets going, it requires some serious suspension of disbelief to truly become invested in the story. There are timeline discrepancies that seem too huge to ignore, the genre seems to change by the half hour and the age gap between the two protagonists is pretty obvious in many scenes.

There are some definite pluses to the film when you get down to it. The technology that has supposedly been perfected in this near future is pretty fun to watch, the film itself is aesthetically quite beautiful and Gary Oldman takes on a role he really doesn't normally with this movie.

If you can take it at face value, the film can be an enjoyable two-hour romp of a Nicholas Sparks-esque romance with a spaceman twist. For the more cynical mind, it may even a bit further of a stretch than the actual distance to Mars.