The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff
by Philip Kaufman

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DVD details

Actor: Dennis Quaid, Ed Harris, Fred Ward, Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn
Director: Philip Kaufman
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Caleb Deschanel
Writer: Philip Kaufman
Editor: Douglas Stewart
Producer: Irwin Winkler
Producer: James D. Brubaker
Producer: Robert Chartoff
Writer: Tom Wolfe
DVD: 2 Sides, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 193 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1997-06-25
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video

DVD Reviews of The Right Stuff

DVD Review: Corny and a bit dated
Summary: 3 Stars

This preceded by at least a decade Hollywood's obsession with relatively accurate biopics, so what you see here is very old-school: corny humor, stereotypes and emotional manipulation at every turn. The women are all long-suffering, the politicians clueless, the nerds who recruit the astronauts feckless and the astronauts themselves macho. Most macho is Chuck Yeager, of course, the high school grad who wasn't educated enough to be an astronaut, but who is portrayed as probably the bravest and best qualified. This also suffers from long periods of relatively boring exposition, such as the attempted comic health testing of the would-be astronauts. The movie is over 3 hours, which is about 90 minutes too long. This wasn't a big hit, and it seems dated by today's standards. It was up against "The Big Chill" back then, with that film's then-innovative soundtrack of oldies. This cast, however, is largely perfect in their resemblance to their real-life counterparts.

DVD Review: A few comments
Summary: 5 Stars

At over 160 reviews and counting, I'm not sure I can add anything new about the move, but I did want to make a few comments.

This epic movie was instantly hailed as an American classic. Covering the trials and tribulations of America's space race, it follows that history through the lives of the early test pilots such as Chuck Yeager and Scott Crossfield, and the original 7 Mercury astronauts.

I recently saw this movie again after 25 years, and it held up very well. The scenes are just very well set up and filmed, and the actors did a wonderful job with their roles. I'm sure they suspected this was a truly epic and historic film and perhaps that brought out everyone's best efforts. I note Chuck Yeager appeared briefly in the film at the Happy Bottom saloon. If I'm not mistaken, he was the older gentleman named Fred asking one of the recruiters if he wanted a whisky.

This movie is a first-rate drama from beginning to end, with a fine script, great acting, superb cinematography, and you can't ask for a more dramatic story. The astronauts are portrayed unsentimentally with all their faults as well as strengths, along with their long-suffering wives. The wives themselves don't get much play in the movie except for a few scenes; the one with John Glen's wife and president Johnson was very interesting and well done and I didn't know that story before. But this story is really about the men, and the wives are basically there to support them.

A few minor quips, though. The film takes some artistic license with the facts, but then it's a movie and some of that is expected. After Yeager fell from his horse and broke two ribs, it was actually two months and 13 test flights later that he made the record breaking flight, not the next day as shown in the movie. Werner von Braun actually had very little to do with the Mercury capsule program itself, and yet he's shown pretty much running that show. Gus Grissom is shown as being a bit sleazy and opportunistic by taking little trinkets and coins into orbit so that they'd be worth something, but actually all the astronauts did that so that they could give them to family and friends.

Despite the astronauts' human flaws, ultimately the movie portrays their deeds as truly heroic, as they should be. The dangers were real, and all those test rockets (especially the Atlas booster) did blow up as depicted. One reason this happened and that the Russians were initially ahead was that our rockets used liquid oxygen and hydrogen, which are very unstable and dangerous in liquid form, whereas the Russian rockets, amazingly, used kerosene. Kerosene yields so much less energy per unit volume, though, that their rockets are said to have been twice the size of ours in order to be powerful enough. But they worked and as a result they beat us into space. But this movie is about the U.S.'s desperate struggle to catch up and how that set the stage for the U.S. eventually passing the Russians and beating them to the moon.

Overall, it's a great movie and has held up very well.

DVD Review: Classic aviation
Summary: 5 Stars

Long time fan of the movie, happy to get in DVD to replace my VHS. Factually the movie is fairly accurate. Its a bonus having the real Chuck Yeager appear in a couple of scenes! Effects are great. Always thought the movie dragged a bit about 3/5th in but then pics up again.

DVD Review: Surprisingly bad
Summary: 2 Stars

The Bottom Line:

This agonizingly long film which devotes at least an hour of screen time to Sam Shepherd riding his horse, talking to his wife in the sunset, and doing brave deeds merely out of manly duty might better be titled "Chuck Yeager: All-American Hero;" unhappy to merely humanize and reconstruct the heroes of the Space Age, the film decides to invent one and in so doing becomes an overlong mismatch of ideas and scenes that drags mightily and presents 5 dumb moments (e.g. the Aborigines' sparks keep John Glenn aloft! LBJ as a big comical buffoon!) for every good one.

2/4

DVD Review: Most enjoyable
Summary: 5 Stars

I had not watched this film in quite a few years, it was well worth the purchase of this special edition. Besides enjoying the film again, there are plenty of extras, including interviews with various people associated with the film.

While the film itself may not be completely historically accurate, the essence of telling the story of the early days of the space race is there. Some of the techniques used in filming were unprecedented at the time and films like 'Forest Gump' owe a degree of homage to this film.

Highly recommended.

Description of The Right Stuff

THE UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL STORY OF AMERICA'S SPACE PROGRAM AT ITS CONCEPTION.

Philip Kaufman's intimate epic about the Mercury astronauts (based on Tom Wolfe's book) was one of the most ambitious and spectacularly exciting movies of the 1980s. It surprised almost everybody by not becoming a smash hit. By all rights, the film should have been every bit the success that Apollo 13 would later become; The Right Stuff is not only just as thrilling, but it is also a bigger and better movie. Combining history (both established and revisionist), grand mythmaking (and myth puncturing), adventure, melodrama, behind-the-scenes dish, spectacular visuals, and a down-to-earth sense of humor, The Right Stuff chronicles NASA's efforts to put a man in orbit. Such an achievement would be the first step toward President Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon, and, perhaps most important of all, would win a crucial public relations/morale victory over the Soviets, who had delivered a stunning blow to American pride by launching Sputnik, the first satellite. The movie contrasts the daring feats of the unsung test pilots--one of whom, Chuck Yeager, embodied more than anyone else the skill and spirit of Wolfe's title--against the heavily publicized (and sanitized) accomplishments of the Mercury astronauts. Through no fault of their own, the spacemen became prisoners of the heroic images the government created for them in order to capture the public's imagination. The casting is inspired; the film features Sam Shepard as the legendary Yeager, Ed Harris as John Glenn, Dennis Quaid as "Gordo" Cooper, Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard, Fred Ward as Gus Grissom, Scott Wilson as Scott Crossfield, and Pamela Reed and Veronica Cartwright are superb in their thankless roles as astronauts' wives. --Jim Emerson

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