By: Andrew Wing

Moonshot is a 2022 American science-fiction romantic comedy film directed by Chris Winterbauer and written by Max Taxe. It stars Cole Sprouse (The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Riverdale), Lana Condor (X-Men: Apocalypse, To All the Boys film series), Mason Gooding (son of Cuba Gooding Jr., and he recently starred in Scream - see Ted’s full review of that here), Emily Rudd (Fear Street trilogy), and Zach Braff (Scrubs, Garden State).

The plot follows a college student, Sophie (Condor), who helps a barista, Walt (Sprouse), sneak onboard a space shuttle to Mars. Together, they join forces in order to be reunited with their significant others, embarking on a lively journey that takes them wildly off course.

The film was released on HBO Max on March 31, 2022.

THE GOOD

With as crazy a year as 2022 has already proven to be when it comes to movies, Moonshot completely went under my radar. I actually didn’t even catch it until it popped up on the HBO Max homepage one day last month. Needless to say, I did some research and saw that it was starring the guy I grew up watching every morning before school in Cole Sprouse from both The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and The Suite Life on Deck, so I knew right then and there that I had to check it out. Aside from that, it also starred Lana Condor who was the star of the Netflix To All the Boys trilogy (2018-2021) that I actually really enjoyed watching. Despite all that, I had never heard of the director before and it is labeled as a sci-fi rom-com which is a blend of genres that I don’t know if any film before has tackled all at once. With all that said, were the familiar faces enough to make this a quality movie that is worth the watch? Keep reading to find out!

I am not going to write a dissertation on this, so let’s just get right into it. This film pleasantly surprised me as I enjoyed it from start to finish. It was a unique story that was very well written by Max Taxe, and the fact that the director Chris Winterbauer was able to blend these three very distinct genres together and make a solid movie is very impressive to me. Continuing with Winterbauer, there was more he did that impressed me. None of his directorial choices were off the charts or mind-blowing, but he knew what he was trying to make and what he was working with, and that led to him having a pretty good feature film debut if I do say so myself, and I look forward to seeing what he does next!

Next with the performances, and it’s only right that I start with the two stars. Both Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor were great, but Sprouse is definitely the main character of the film and his performance was the best in my opinion. Sprouse has really just been doing the CW television series Riverdale for the past five years, which I admit I do watch, but it’s not that great of a show, to tell the truth. However, he starred alongside Haley Lu Richardson in the 2019 romantic drama film Five Feet Apart and he was great in that, and after another good performance in this, I really hope he starts getting more roles in movies. Yes, I am biased when it comes to him just because I loved him and grew up watching him on the Disney Channel, but he is really a talented actor and he put that on full display here.

With Condor, she was perfect in her role. As I said, I loved her in the To All the Boys trilogy, and in this, despite it still being a romantic film, she showcased some more of her acting skills with some comedy that I didn’t see coming. Her chemistry with Sprouse I thought was fantastic, and there is no denying that she has a very bright future ahead of her. Sprouse and Condor were the stars of the show no doubt, but all of the performances helped make the movie as enjoyable as it was. From Mason Gooding, Emily Rudd, to Zach Braff who played a sort of comedic Elon Musk type of character, all of the actors played their roles tremendously.

Other quick things I want to touch on when it comes to Moonshot were the cinematography, production design, visual effects, and also the soundtrack. The cinematography was done by Brendan Uegama and I will now remember his name as I thought there were some stunning shots in the film. The look of the film wasn’t on the level of some of the other sci-classics from the past decade like Gravity, Interstellar, or the lesser-known Ad Astra, but it added a lot to the film and continuing with the look of the film, the production design was superb when it came to the shuttle they were on, and the VFX were miles better than I thought they would be when I hit play. And lastly, the soundtrack was solid. It was very modern as it included a lot of the top songs from the past year, but it brought the film to life and it meshed very well with David Boman’s score.

THE BAD

Yeah, so if you can’t tell yet, I was pretty pleased with Moonshot. It was a fun watch, it was better than expected, and I would recommend it, but despite all that, it did have its flaws. First, it’s important to note that this film will not be in any awards conversations later in the year, and there is nothing wrong with that. But just to address some of the things I didn’t vibe with when it came to Moonshot, it was predictable like most rom-coms are, I think it could have been a good ten to fifteen minutes shorter but it didn’t bother me too much, and lastly, the side characters that were meant to be funny were terribly not funny. I won’t name names, but there was one character who to me was literally just trying to be like Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live and it was annoying, to say the least. Other than that, Moonshot definitely has more good than bad and I liked it.

THE VERDICT

While it won’t be in the awards conversation towards the end of the year, Moonshot was surprisingly pretty good as it’s a rom-com set in space that features two great performances from both Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor. Sure, it was predictable like most romcoms are, but it was a fun watch from start to finish and it also had a solid modern soundtrack and some stunning visuals.