Billy Bob: We have a problem

Maybe Billy Bob was confused. Maybe when the script for "The Astronaut Farmer" was pitched to him, it sounded like he would be playing the role of a space-age farmer, negotiating the elements on Mars while trying to grow space fruit to support his family and fend off alien invaders who try to destroy his crops. But sadly, that's not the plot of this movie. This movie is much worse.\n"Astronaut Farmer" stars Billy Bob Thorton as Charles Farmer, a rancher in a small town in Texas with aspirations of taking his homemade rocket into outer space. His wife, Audie (Virginia Madsen), is so inexplicably supportive of her husband's dreams that she doesn't even bat an eyelash when he takes their kids out of school to help build and launch said rocket. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Bruce Dern as the grandfather and Bruce Willis as a colonel and old friend of Charles.\nI know you are supposed to suspend your disbelief when you walk into a theater to see a movie, so I am not going to sit here and say the premise for this movie could never happen in the real world. However, the filmmakers bring that upon themselves with dialogue between government officials and Farmer about him building a WMD. "If I was building a (WMD), you wouldn't be able to find it," is the smartass response from Farmer. With the mere mention of WMD, the audience is reminded that this film does take place in post-9/11 America and a redneck rancher ordering 10,000 pounds. of rocket fuel over the Internet would raise some red flags in Washington.\nNow let's proceed to the scene with the launch failure. The rocket falls off the launch pad and launches horizontally (like a stinger missile). Somehow, Farmer survives! OK, I'll let that go, for now. But then, with the sheer love and support of his family fueling him, Farmer recovers from the accident and rebuilds the rocket in less than 15 minutes of screen time.\nLastly, let's get to the rocket. How and why this rancher from Texas built a rocket in his barn is never adequately explained. In the beginning of the movie, the rocket is just there, and we slowly learn that Farmer had some pilot experience in the military. According to the movie, Farmer got all the parts for his rocket from "rocket graveyards," and from my perspective, I think the set designer got most of their props for their sets from a "movie set graveyard" that included sets from "Apollo 13" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."\nIn fact the entire film has that recycled, yet arrogant feel to it. Just because you can make a movie about a delusional "astronaut" with a shoddy premise, bad set design and superficial characters, doesn't mean you should.