Captain Nova Parent Guide

It’s 2050 and the earth has been devastated by unintended consequences of oil drilling in the Arctic. A massive release of methane rapidly accelerated the effects of climate change, leading to widespread flooding and a catastrophic deterioration in air quality. The only people left alive are forced to live underground. But they aren’t willing to sit around and passively accept their fate: test pilot Captain Nova (Anniek Pheifer) is set to embark on a mission that will save them all – a mission to the past. If she can prevent the Arctic drilling from happening, she may be able to save the planet.

Time travel is never simple and it has some unintended consequences: Nova (Kika van de Vijver) finds herself de-aged to roughly twelve years old. Armed with steely determination and a helpful flying robot, ADD (Sander van de Pavert), she teams up with Nas (Marouane Meftah), a young boy who witnesses her crash landing and offers to help. But who is going to take a couple of teenagers seriously?

First of all, I have no idea why Captain Nova has a TV-14 rating. Either I missed something significant, or the rating is insane. With only minor profanity, no graphic violence, sexual content, drinking or smoking, this movie is squeaky clean. More than that, the film addresses a serious global issue in a way that’s appropriate and exciting for kids.

I’m not sure how much adults will get out of it, though. The plot is fairly simplistic, and the characters aren’t anything to write home about. I was fairly bored for most of the film, truth be told, but that’s mostly because it kept reminding me of this funky experimental French film, La Jetée, and I would rather watch that. Rather than journeying into the past to prevent a climate crisis, La Jetée sees a survivor of nuclear war sent into the future to find a solution to the problem. It’s an interesting film, if you have the patience for what is essentially half an hour of still photography and narration.

But I digress. This is a perfectly acceptable and approachable piece of family entertainment, and your kids are likely to have fun with the adventure, chatty robot, and topical story, without being bombarded with cussing, gore, or sex. You won’t have to deal with subtitles if your kids don’t like them because the film is available in an English dub. And, since this is a Netflix film, you don’t even have to pay out any cost above your existing subscription. For that, I can put up with a little predictability.