Special Effects=A, Acting=D

Rating: 2/10 (17 March 2014)

This is a very unusual movie. Unusually BAD. Bedtime for Bonzo has this in spades. It starts with Sandra Bullock, (S.B.), doing a space walk repair. While somebody is playing REALLY LOUD Country music so you can barely hear the commentary. She is a medical engineer. Given a command to go inside because an emergency has occurred, she refuses, (for no apparent reason), and has to be ordered. The ship is destroyed by flying particles by accident and she becomes almost catatonic, then hysterical and remains that way through most of the movie.
Everyone is killed except George Clooney, the mission commander, who is calm, confident and knowledgeable in the spacecraft, physics and survival. S.B. has been sent into space after her daughter has accidentally died. S.B. is obviously suffering from PTSD but sent into space ANYWAY. No screening apparently, no psych tests, nothing. Like Obama choosing ambassadors based on their donations instead of EVER having been to a country, speaking the language or having any knowledge of it. She proceeds to do everything wrong and requires constant babysitting . NO ACTING GOING ON HERE. G.C. helps her until he valiantly dies to save her. She Can't fly the craft, always failed in training, and has no self-confidence whatsoever. Catastrophe on top of catastrophe she proves her mental instability, from being catatonic to hysterical to suicidal.
Apparently in Space everything is a couple of miles apart and easily reachable with little spacecraft attached to the shuttle, the International Space Station and the Chinese Space Station. Time after time she experiences disastrous calamities destroying one station after another. At last in the Chinese station she tries to commit suicide. WHY would an ASTRONAUT consider this, EVER?
She has a vision of G.C. who gives her essential information to try to survive, (except he's DEAD). Is this supposed to come from her head? When she clearly has NO practical knowledge or survivor skills? She can't read the Chinese characters and just hits buttons until by luck her module is jettisoned loose and she begins to enter the atmosphere and burn up. Somehow this does not occur and she lands safely in the ocean. Her module then begins to sink and she barely escapes drowning. Clue here - she is not attacked by sharks, whales or jellyfish, nor does she apparently land in Somalia. They probably deleted that part because the movie became too tedious.
S.B. was good in The Net. Here she's not a brilliant anything but a mother almost out of touch with reality because of a recent tragedy. Someone who should be institutionalized rather than sent to space. She's nearly non-functional and after the first ten minutes of the movie SHE'S THE ONLY ONE IN IT! This is an unusual idea of an astronaut...don't train, don't learn, don't be the best most competent at your job and know all the other ones too but instead feel sorry for yourself, cry a lot, become hysterical and even suicidal and everything will work out by sheer LUCK.
The effects were nice but we've seen those improve from 2001 to Oblivion. G.C. was too perfect which contrasted with S.B. to make her look even worse. Waste of money and time and Bullock is going to make over 70 million dollars from this. I hope they don't give her an award for this because it's running against "Reliving Slavery Again". The millions in HYPE apparently paid off. Propaganda wins over substance. Guess we'll never see another Casablanca again.