Film
Directed by Peter Chelsom, The Space Between Us is a romance with a science fiction backstory.
Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield – Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ender’s Game), first human born on Mars, travels to Earth for the first time, seeking to discover how he came to be, he sets out on an adventure of self-discovery and exploration, with the street smart Tulsa (Britt Robertson – Mother’s Day, Tomorrowland).
Along the way, Gardner seeks to learn more about his mother, astronaut Sarah Elliot (Janet Montgomery), all while those from NASA, led by Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes , RoboCop) seek to protect him from the many dangers of Earth, a planet of people of which he knows very little.
The Space Between Us is a delightful coming of age romance, with the science fiction and space settings only serving to add a unique spin on the age old story of boy seeks girl.
As for rewatch value, the few small twists to the plot that might have eluded viewers on initial viewings might be known, but the whole idea of travelling so far, and meeting someone special is still strong throughout, and certainly worth seeing again.
Read the full SAMDB review of The Space Between Us.
Disc
Overall, the disc is of a good quality, technically, with an enjoyable main feature. Yet it is devoid of any bonus features, where even an audio commentary might have been nice for viewers.
The Space Between Us is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video is encoded at a high average bitrate, with no visible artefacts on screen, nor visible colour bleed. Colour are vibrant in most scenes, with detail maintained in darker locations.
Viewers with the necessary hardware or software could scale up to a larger or higher resolution screen, should they wish.
The disc menus, with the exception of the still background of the audio menu, are also encoded at a decent bitrate, meaning none of the usual artefacts on these when viewed on larger and/or higher resolution screens.
Audio
Sound is presented in a choice of Dolby 5.1 or a 2.0 downmix. Dialogue is clear via the centre speaker, with the weight of audio carried by the front channels. The surround channels are used to great effect to enhance the viewer experience, and further draw the viewer into the on-screen action.
Navigation
The main menu contains three text links for playing the movie, scene selection, and audio. The menu has a motion background, with accompanying music, with some scenes from the film, although they do not reveal too much about the plot.
The scene selection sub-menus each contain ten desaturated, still thumbnails. While these are numbered, they are not labelled, and some guesswork would be needed in order to navigate to a specific part of the main film.
The audio sub-menu has choices for Dolby Surround and Dolby Stereo.
Bonus Features
There are unfortunately no bonus features on the disc, not even the usual trailers that autoplay at the beginning of many discs, although many viewers might be glad for that.
