Moonshot Parent Guide

In a near future complete with commercial space travel and robot employees, Walt (Cole Sprouse) is very much stuck on Earth. Muddling his way through university (with 16 majors in three years), he works part time as an assistant barista to a robot and dreams of going to Mars. Walt’s no idle dreamer: he has applied to the Kovi Industries Student Mars Program 37 times… and been rejected each time.

Walt seems doomed to terrestrial mediocrity until he has a meet-cute with a girl at a party. Ginny (Emily Rudd) is having an “existential crisis” and Walt’s passion for space helps her resolve it. But their connection only fires up his desire to burst the bonds of planet Earth.

At the same party, Walt has a “meet-awkward” with Sophie (Lana Condor), a highly organized, academically successful young woman whose boyfriend, Calvin (Mason Gooding), is already on Mars. Learning that he’s extended his employment contract there, Sophie’s devastated. When Walt needles her into overcoming her fear of flying, she purchases a commercial ticket to the red planet – and soon discovers an unexpected stowaway on the flight.

Moonshot is not a sophisticated sci-fi flick, but it is a perfectly competent teen romance. Walt and Sophie are opposites: she’s brilliant and driven and he’s spontaneous and academically average. The two first repel and then attract one another, hitting romance tropes all the way. For female viewers, the most interesting part of the movie will be Sophie’s commitment to developing her own scientific expertise. Although she loves Calvin, their relationship is strained by his expectation that her interests and goals will mesh with his. Walt opens up a new potential future for her – one marked by spontaneity, exploration, and fun, with her interests in the center. Whether this is an improvement over the relationship she has with Calvin or is simply another type of unbalanced relationship is an interesting topic for discussion.

Less appealing is the film’s negative content. The two dozen swear words are relatively light by Hollywood standards, but the single sexual expletive is unnecessary. Also unnecessary are some conversations involving sexual innuendo and a scene where a protagonist is implied to be intoxicated.

If the negative content doesn’t annoy you, there are a few areas where the movie delivers a bit more than you would expect from a teen rom-com. The blatant mockery of the billionaire owner of Kovi Industries is relevant enough to be funny. But what really shines is the film’s palpable love of our home planet. As Sophie says to Walt, “You’ve been on a spaceship traveling through the stars your entire life. Earth. In a billion years we will never build or find anything quite like it. It’s our only spaceship. What could we possibly do out here that we couldn’t do there?” With this focus, Moonshot isn’t just a love story between Sophie and Walt; it’s a love letter to our beautiful, blue planet.