Crater
Disney+Crater is one of the few films carried over from 20th Century Fox's in-development scripts. It is a pretty promising movie with a diverse fun cast of kids going on an adventure across the moon. Or so it wants the audience to believe. This is a movie with no target audience. It's far too boring and depressing for young children, but too juvenile in its ideas to appeal to an older crowd. It sits squarely in the middle of this odd subsection of an audience, and it does all of this while becoming a worse movie as each act progresses.
The main kids of the story do a fine enough job at conveying the proper emotions to deal with the horrors of capitalism, suicide, and growing old but ultimately the issue is that these heavy-handed topics were not given good backing due to an overwhelmingly mediocre script. Each of the children in the friend group (McKenna Grace, Isaiah Bradley, Billy Barrat, Orson Hong, and Thomas Boyce) are given a "tragic" backstory. These backstories are mostly related to the poor working conditions that their families have dealt with for generations, especially Marcus (Thomas Boyce) whose family hasn't been on Earth in decades. Familial trauma is a hot topic in film, especially recently with the rise of accepting mental illness and trauma as serious discussions that need to be had, but, for better or for worse, how this is portrayed in the media will reflect how others approach these topics. So, when done in a manner that ignores the importance of these things and turns them into a piece of their, already thin, character arcs it turns an already subpar piece of science fiction into a groan-inducing, emotionally manipulative coming-of-age film as well.
Now, none of this is a sting against the child actors here either. They are doing everything they can with the script that has been given to them. It is very obvious that child actors tend to receive too much flack in Hollywood. It is important to notice when they obviously elevate the material they are given, and each of these children does just that. Isaiah Bradley and McKenna Grace are two absolute standouts here with a lot of room to show off their acting prowess over the one-hundred-minute runtime. Then there's Caleb's father, who is being played by Kid Cudi in a small, yet very impactful role.
Some aspects of the plot must be explained in order to touch on a few of the biggest issues present. The story itself is very simple. It follows a group of kids who live on a moon colony and then proceed to steal a rover to find a certain crater on its surface. One of the main plot elements is that on this colony the men must work as helium miners for 20 years to earn safe passage to Earth's newest colony, Omega. Due to horrible working conditions and contractual issues, the 20 years are frequently extended to the point where it is passed down for generations. Generations of families are now helium miners on this moon colony. There's only one loophole. If you die in the mines your family gets to leave for Omega for free.
Our story follows Caleb (Isaiah Bailey) a young boy whose mother died when he was even younger and whose father had recently passed while working in the mines. The story then proceeds to take on topics such as grief from the loss of parents, and the very strong possibility that his father committed suicide in the mines so Caleb would have safe passage to Omega. These topics are handled extremely poorly. With the handling becoming borderline offensive by the final thirty minutes. These are tough topics to cover in a movie aimed at families, but if the writers are incapable of doing them justice they should not do them at all.
Take, for example, the possibility that Caleb's father may have taken his own life in order to secure a safer, happier lifestyle for his son. This could be an emotionally fulfilling moment for Caleb to come to the realization of. This is not what happens. This startling realization is brushed off to the side with a few words by his friend Dylan (Billy Barrat) in an attempt to play the "your dad did it for you" card. This is not only a lazy storytelling device but an arguably triggering and offensive way to deal with suicide in anything, let alone a film for children on Disney+.
Now, the film itself looks quite good. With a reported fifty-three million dollar budget it seems to have gone a decent way into making this moon colony come to life. It is technically very sound all around, but unfortunately, there's not much more to it than that. Decent sound design, standard direction, and a forgettable soundtrack would be noticeable in a good movie but are downright unmissable in a movie of this quality. This is another straight-to-streaming film that will easily get lost among the neverending catalog of Disney+, but this one may just actually deserve it.