What happens when four aging film icons are dropped into the same movie and are expected to blend as smoothly as a banana daiquiri? As one critic puts it, director Eastwood not only defuses this potentially chaotic combination, but "redeems a cliché-riddled script that has no business working half as well as it does."
"Space Cowboys" is the playful kind of show you would watch on a Saturday morning over a bowl of Captain Crunch in your fire engine pj's, if you were one-eighth the age of the actors in this flick.
Eastwood plays Col. Frank Corvin, the man who designed the Russian communications satellite called IKON which is now old and defective and on a collision course with earth. Along with Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner, who play wannabe astronauts who have drifted apart since their glory days as flight-crew team members, Eastwood is called back into service because he is the only one who understands the workings of the ancient piece of equipment.
After Corvin convinces NASA to allow him and his team to fulfill their dreams of traveling into space, NASA green-lights the four oldsters only if they can keep up with the training course – the likes of which would have made even a young Eastwood break a sweat.
Bullies, boo-boos and ageism make up the other half of the teams' trials.
"Space Cowboys" is playing at Market Square East.