Tiffany “Rex” Simpson (Emma Roberts) is a party girl from Florida who works as a bartender. Once upon a time, she wanted to be an astronaut. When her best friend Nadine (Poppy Liu) tweaks her letter to NASA, against all odds, Rex is accepted into the program.
I’ve been a fan of Roberts for as long as I can remember. She takes on a lot of different types of roles and while they don’t win any awards, you can tell that she is having a fun time with it. Her friendship with Liu’s Nadine was one of the highlights for me – the way in which Nadine went to bat for Rex and pretty much committed fraud just so she could make her dreams come true shows that she is a true ride or die. In fact, the rest of the cast was pretty good too. From the camaraderie with the rest of her teammates in NASA (Kuhoo Verma, Desi Lydic, Yasha Jackson, Andrew Call and Josephine Huang) to Logan O’Leery (Tom Hopper) and Pam Proctor (Gabrielle Union) who ran the program, everyone gelled really well together.
One needs to suspend all disbelief while watching as there is no way that this could happen in real life. But at the core of an otherwise bonkers plot is a story of finding yourself and following your dreams. It reminded me a lot of Legally Blonde. Nobody believed Elle could go to Harvard just like everyone overlooked Rex at NASA. At the end of the day, they proved everyone wrong.
I honestly thought that Space Cadet was going to be awful. It came across as cringey and kind of childish, just what you would expect from a film on a streaming platform. What I got instead was something that actually really resonated with me as I’m sure it will with many others. It was also the perfect pick for the Fourth of July.
Rating: ♥️♥️♥️
Credits Rolling 