When I first heard that Damien Chazelle, that boy-wonder filmmaker of such exciting, innovative movies as Whiplash and LaLa Land was directing First Man - a fact-based account of man's first trip on the moon - I was mildly skeptical. In the last few decades, Hollywood has churned out its fare share of outer space astronaut dramas (Apollo 13, The Astronaut Farmer, Gravity, to name just a few), and for First Man to be at all relevant - especially given Chazelle's high expectations from here on in every time he steps behind the camera - it would have to be quite a spectacle. Unfortunately, the movie arrives with a dull less significant than a pancake on a plate.
As Neil Armstrong, that monumental astronaut who uttered the now legendary "It's a small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" inspirational words as he stepped on the lunar surface back in 1969, Ryan Gosling sleepwalks through the role like a man well aware that he passed on better scripts than this one in order to re-team with his LaLa Land auteur. He appears bored in the role, because he's too talented an actor to play this charmless of a part; Neil Armstrong is not fascinating enough of a character to be worthy of nearly two-and-a-half hour (seriously, why the fuck is this movie this long???) sleep inducing "epic". Even Claire Foy, that charismatic actress of Netflix's superb series The Crown, looks to just be going through the motions, recycling the same house-wife worrisome tendencies as Kathleen Quinlan did in Apollo 13 some 23 years ago.
Don't get me wrong: First Man is not a bad movie, not by any means. But in an over-saturated, late year Hollywood movie surge, it comes across as way too monotonous, and at least thirty minutes too long. Gosling's Armstrong may have walked on the moon, but First Man never reaches the heavens its trailers promised it would.
C
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