We Do Not Have Lift-Off

By JAMES COLLINS

Usually when a movie star dreams up an extravagantly ambitious and costly project, the world shudders, knowing the result will be an overblown, unwatchable exercise in narcissism. With Tom Hanks, though, things are different. Hanks is so modest and so intelligent that if he invests himself in a film there's good reason to believe it has merit. There is also reason to hope it will be a success. While it's satisfying to see certain stars get their comeuppance, Hanks seems to be someone who deserves to flourish.

The extravagantly ambitious and costly project Hanks has dreamed up is From the Earth to the Moon, a 12-part mini-series for HBO that tells the story of NASA from the first Mercury mission in 1961 to the last flight to the moon in 1972. It will be shown in one-hour episodes on various dates over a six-week period, beginning this Sunday, April 5, at 8 p.m. E.T. Hanks, who starred in the movie Apollo 13 in 1995 and has had a lifelong interest in space, conceived and oversaw the production. It was an extremely complicated undertaking, involving scores of actors, elaborate special effects and several directors--among them Sally Field and Hanks himself (he also wrote one episode, in which he appears, and co-wrote three others). With a budget of $68 million, From the Earth to the Moon cost 10 times what HBO usually spends on an original program.

The result? Based on the five parts available for viewing, this mini-series is anything but a vanity project. Rather, it is a diligent, well-crafted work that never spins out of control despite its grandiose conception. And yet, as anyone with an ear for faint praise can tell by now, it is pretty dull. That may seem hard to believe, given the subject matter--space exploration!--but watching From the Earth to the Moon induces a state of cognitive dissonance. The acting is first-rate; the details look right; still, the overall effect is boredom.

How can this be? The simplest explanation is that the story From the Earth to the Moon tries to tell is too vast to be contained even in 12 hours. The movie Apollo 13 was a success largely because of its simple, intense narrative--guys go up in space, look as if they'll die, succeed in not dying. The mini-series is much more diffuse. Hanks and his colleagues have tried to be selective, but the smaller stories they tell either are not the right ones or are not dramatized effectively.

For example, episode 2, set in 1967, concerns the investigation into the causes of fire on Apollo 1 that killed three men. The technical sleuthing is mildly interesting, and the two engineers at the center of the tale are sympathetic, yet the episode never crackles. The hour that follows focuses on Wally Schirra, leader of the Apollo 7 mission, who is played by Mark Harmon. In an irritating device, Peter Horton is a documentary filmmaker who questions Schirra and others. The result is an aimless string of interviews; Schirra talks more than he acts, and the story has no drive.

The only source of suspense in the Schirra episode is a worry over the winds on the day of lift-off. Surely, if three men are going to sit on a skyscraper-size tube of rocket fuel and then be sent into space for 11 days, there must be more exciting matters to dwell on. In general, the mini-series fails to give the viewer a good sense of the purposes and risks of the missions. That's not surprising, since scientific information is so hard to convey in a drama. The result, though, is that we don't appreciate the challenges NASA faced or the ingenious ways it met them. In view of this flaw and the failure to bring individuals really alive, one wonders if a documentary approach would have been preferable to a dramatization. It would have provided more clarity and very possibly more emotion. As Ken Burns has demonstrated, a documentary need not be dry.

There are other problems--the flat, earnest tone, the lack of any bad guys, the by-now familiar re-creation of Mission Control. Ultimately, though, From the Earth to the Moon suffers from a fundamental problem that its creators could do nothing about: the moon missions were a disappointment. They were thrilling while they took place, but that effect dissipated quickly in the 1970s, as NASA lost its way. Mankind's giant leap never seemed to take us beyond rocks and golf shots. Hanks may want to restore NASA's glory, but on the evidence so far, he hasn't succeeded. Like its subject, From the Earth to the Moon is, contrary to all expectations, a bit of a dud.