Cultural Gap Film #1: Apollo 13

Relevant element: "Houston, we have a problem."

Why it resonated: The combination of a well-known story of surviving a series of catastrophic failures and the pithiness of military-style understatement made this instantly recognizable shorthand for any bad situation. Did you just realize, as your dog was emptying his bowels, that you're out of waste disposal bags? "Houston, we have a problem." Have you just dropped a birthday cake on the floor? "Houston, we have a problem."  

General comments on the film: If you've never seen this movie, just take about 20 seconds to imagine what it's like. Got it? You're exactly right. Not a single element of Apollo 13 surprises you--not the casting, not the plot, not the dialogue, not the cinematography, definitely not the music.... 

That's not to say it's a bad film. It does a solid job of telling a can't-miss dramatic true story. But if you share my low tolerance for unrelenting earnestness, the pure twinkling Hanksianism of the movie wears on you pretty quickly. So does the sledgehammer foreshadowing, as people harp on the unluckiness of the mission number, small children ask their astronaut fathers if another disaster could happen, and astronauts' wives drop their wedding rings down shower drains. All of this pushes it into the territory of fiveshadowing, which seems a touch unnecessary when we all know what's coming before the movie even starts.

But Ron Howard has never been the kind of director who lets an emotional button go unpushed. The swelling score might as well include choirs of thousands singing, "This is inspirational" over and over. And what could be more essential to the story than the mission commander's elderly mother defiantly asserting that her son could land a flying washing machine safely? Similarly, Howard never lets you forget for a second that it's 1970, even though it's unlikely that you would. We're given multiple "But mom, I want to be a hippie!" scenes, and there always seems to be a radio on in the background playing a seminal song of the time.   

On the plus side, Clint Howard is always a welcome inclusion, and it is a darn good story about people fighting against the slings and arrows of a world seemingly governed by Murphy's Law.