Moon Shot
Well. You certainly can’t accuse Thai director Thanadol Nualsuth of lacking ambition or not knowing what FreenBecky fans want.
Uranus 2324
Director: Thanadol Nualsuth • Writers: Thitipong Chaisati, Nut Nualpang
Starring: Sarocha Chankimha, Rebecca Patricia Armstrong, Amarin Nitibhon, Siriam Pakdeedumrongrit
Thailand • 2hrs 11mins
Opens Hong Kong Oct 24 • IIB
Grade: C+
There is just so much going on in director Thanadol Nualsuth’s Uranus 2324 | ยูเรนัส 2324 there’s barely even time to crack the plethora of juvenile “yer-anus” jokes that are sitting there… waiting. It’s one of those bonkers, shoot for the moon (sorry) genre mash-ups that doesn’t do any of them particularly well and relies almost entirely on the massive popularity of its soft focus leads to tell its story. A story that can’t even keep its own mythology straight most of the time, which sadly bungles an interesting metaphysical premise that quite explicitly links outer and inner space – the cosmos and the oceans – as humanity’s ultimate scientific, personal and emotional frontier. It’s not a new idea, James Cameron did something similar in The Abyss and Carl Sagan banged that drum for years, but Thanadol’s relentless focus on the romance to exploit the power of FreenBecky – the portmanteau of model-singer-actors Sarocha Chankimha and Rebecca Patricia Armstrong – makes for a messy watch that’s also one part Thai travelogue and one part product catalogue. Word on the street is that Uranus 2324, Thailand’s first “space epic” was among the first projects awarded a production grant under the Pheu Thai-led government’s new soft power policy. Uh oh.
Best known for the horror hit The Intruder and rom-coms like Love at First Flood, Thanadol is also leveraging the success of FreenBecky’s Gap: The Series (which racked up 800 million YouTube views) and the chemistry they displayed in that show. FreenBecky is now associated with the bona fide Girls’ Love (the feminine companion to the ragingly popular Boys’ Love), yaoi, yuri, and Y Girl (in Thailand) phenomena, and so Thanadol and co-writers Thitipong Chaisati, Nut Nualpan go heavy in creating a (chaste) sapphic tale that crosses time and space and wants to ponder questions about fate and the possibility of soul mates.
Gril love as product
Action starts in Boston – we know this because they say “Boston” about half a dozen times – with Kath (Armstrong) and her mother Rose (Siriam Pakdeedumrongrit) stiffly debating whether to sell the old family home in Bangkok. Kath says she’ll go back and handle it, and tells Rose that while she’s there she’ll be entering a freediving competition. Rose is unhappy; Kath hasn’t done any freediving in a decade, and the women lost their photographer dad/husband Yut (Amarin Nitibhon) in a freedive accident. While back in Thailand, Kath sees news about some sort of Lunar Gateway mission that CP is partnering with NASA on. You know CP from its familiar orange and red egg logo, or perhaps for its use of slave labour. But that’s another issue. Kath sees that Lin (Chankimha) has achieved her dream to reach the stars. I guess she’s happy? But disaster strikes when a solar flare (?) forces the mission – perhaps to observe a comet coming into the solar system – to the far side of the moon to hide from radiation, and strikes again when the comet breaks up and trashes the spacecraft. Lin goes on an EVA to replace a battery (?) and promptly gets caught in the… light flare? Radioactive slipstream? Rift in the space time continuum? And meets up with Kath, similarly caught in a deep sea rift caused by the same flare. Let the romantic multiverse madness begin.
Uranus 2324 takes many, many pages from Interstellar – love is a physical constant that transcends space and time (no, it’s not) – to unfurl the story of Kath and Lin’s doomed romance. In any and all timelines they seem destined to be separated, though in the Prime Universe their sad fate is about as prosaic and not-sad as you can imagine. The WTF? moments come fast and furious, and are unfortunately more entertaining than the actual narrative. The action never gets as far at the 24th century, at least I don’t think it does on the Julian calendar; 2324 is the year Uranus was discovered on the Buddhist calendar, but good luck figuring that out without a handy internets machine. The space programme appears to be commanded by a dude (Erich Fleshman) who’s old enough to have been on the Mercury Project. Why is there one vacuum sealed chicken breast on the world’s jankiest spacecraft ever? How did the crew forget to properly stow its fire extinguisher? Where are the instruments? How many times do the actors truly need to repeat their clunky dialogue (answer: many)? And someone tell me what’s up with those effusive diving judges? It’s insanity. Charming and pretty though they may be, neither Chankimha nor Armstrong is a particularly strong actor; neither is especially convincing in their role playing (Mata Hari would be incensed). I’m sure as young actors they were keen to kick ass during the Pacific War scenes but Michelle Yeoh or Jennifer Garner they are not. And in fine yaoi fashion the women’s sexuality is so sterile it may as well not be there. But again: Ambition takes some of the sting out of the shoddy execution, and FreenBecky fans are going to get what they came for. If Thanadol had laid off the egg placement and put more work into the script, Uranus 2324 might have been on to something.