The Aeronauts ** (2019, Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, Himesh Patel, Tim McInnerny, Anne Reid, Tom Courtenay, Vincent Perez, Phoebe Fox, Robert Glenister, Phoebe Fox, Rebecca Front) – Movie Review

The excellent Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne are fine in The Aeronauts (2019) as Victorian daredevil hot air balloon pilot Amelia Wren and pioneering weather scientist (meteorologist) James Glaisher, and this is a handsome, costly looking production, and a civilised entertainment. But unfortunately The Aeronauts is a rather dull, plodding, over-extended film, with really only enough material for a thrilling 30-minute short.

In the fictionalised adventure story set in its real date of 1862, Glaisher persuades Wren to take him up, up and away to advance human knowledge of the weather and to fly higher than anyone in history at that time.

Towards the end of the movie, as they fly higher than they should in their record-breaking moment, their climactic fight for survival gets involving and even gripping as a people in peril scenario. But, before that, there isn’t really much to co-writer/ director Tom Harper’s The Aeronauts. To pad it out, there are back-story flashbacks, but these prove even duller than the main story. It remains pleasant and inoffensive, but that is disappointing.

Basically, it is a two-hander. It could work on stage as a play. A good cast of Himesh Patel, Tim McInnerny, Anne Reid, Tom Courtenay, Vincent Perez, Phoebe Fox, Robert Glenister, Phoebe Fox, Rebecca Front are all wasted in a script that can’t find them enough to do.

The Aeronauts is written by Jack Thorne, from a story by Jack Thorne and Tom Harper. Alas, they have changed history. Glaisher and co-pilot Henry Tracey Coxwell broke the world record for altitude on 5 September 1862, but Coxwell is replaced with the fictional Amelia Wren.

Tom Harper is the director of Wild Rose (2018).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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