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The American Astronaut (2001)

tomatometer

67

Average Rating: 6/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 3

No consensus yet.

audience

88

liked it
Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 3,743

My Rating

Movie Info

Eraserhead meets Buck Rogers by way of an MGM musical in this bizarre outer-space saga about Samuel Curtis (Cory McAbee), a galactic truck driver looking to make a killing. The film opens with Curtis landing on the freewheeling, all-male asteroid of Ceres. Before winning a dance contest with his buddy Blueberry Pirate -- who is renowned for smuggling fresh fruit -- Curtis learns from Blueberry about a scheme to give a fetal "real live girl" to the similarly male-dominated planet of Jupiter in

Feb 22, 2005

Artistic License Films

Cast

All Critics (35) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (24) | Rotten (12) | DVD (8)

It's a rockabilly space romp, often very bad but usually a visual treat.

March 19, 2004 Full Review Source: Denver Post | Comment
Denver Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A movie so goofy and affable about its willful, second-rate cheesiness that anger becomes a waste of time. You either go along with it or you don't go at all.

January 4, 2002 Full Review Source: Sacramento Bee | Comment
Sacramento Bee
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Movies don't get much more homemade or endearingly eccentric.

November 29, 2001 Full Review Source: Dallas Morning News | Comment
Dallas Morning News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's equal parts creepy, campy, funny, and tedious.

November 25, 2001 Comment
Boston Globe
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Hit-and-miss comedy.

November 2, 2001 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comment
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Just let the expressionistic, oddly charming images wash over you and enjoy the rush of a zero-budget indie that somehow fuses Buck Rogers and the theater of the absurd.

November 1, 2001 Comment
San Jose Mercury News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A cult phenom, with the longest mis-told joke and The Boy Who Actually Saw a Woman's Breast

February 23, 2005 Full Review Source: Movie Habit | Comment
Movie Habit

If you're in the mood for something really out there, this one delivers many rewards.

February 21, 2005 Full Review Source: Now Playing Magazine | Comment

It can be perceived as a pleasant antidote to the Hollywood mainstream comedy.

August 3, 2004 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews | Comment
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

If Andy Warhol ever made a movie with Ed Wood, this might have been the result.

February 9, 2004 Full Review Source: Boulder Weekly | Comment

This musical epic is unlike anything I (or anyone I know) have ever laid eyes on.

December 8, 2002 Full Review Source: Film Threat | Comment
Film Threat

A sui generis, love-it-or-hate-it exercise in homegrown American surrealism.

June 24, 2002 Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly | Comment
L.A. Weekly

Something somewhere between Six-String Samurai and Dead Man (but a science-fiction musical).

June 20, 2002 Full Review Source: Film Freak Central | Comment
Film Freak Central

Every once in a blue moon some inexplicable force of cinema pushes all sanity and sense of aesthetics aside and leaves me defenselessly embracing a movie that has no apparent redeeming factor other than its cheesy eccentricity.

March 7, 2002 Full Review Source: Sacramento News & Review | Comment
Sacramento News & Review

Accepting its darkness, warmth and gentle ridiculousness, you'll find yourself heartened, though you won't be exactly sure why.

January 18, 2002 Full Review Source: Oregonian | Comment
Oregonian
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for The American Astronaut

A space pilot transports the Boy Who Saw a Woman's Breast from Jupiter to Venus to obtain a bounty in this surrealistic space-western musical. I was underwhelmed by this minor cult film; it has some great moments of absurd humor but often drags with sequences of inconsequential nonsense.

January 11, 2012
366weirdmovies
Greg S

Super Reviewer

Irritatingly arty

August 2, 2011
kenstachnik

Super Reviewer

    1. Old Man: Is it just me or do my balls itch?
    – Submitted by Wayne P (10 months ago)

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