Q: Who do you cast to play a young, studly George Clooney?
A: Ethan Peck, the grandson of Gregory Peck who played Spock on Star Trek: Discovery.

Seriously, you would think they’d just use Clooney and Benjamin Button him in post-production.

❄️📡🚀

Not that it really matters. Netflix’s The Midnight Sky is a thin, depressing story. Clooney plays a terminally ill astrophysicist isolated at the North Pole, so his dialogue is subdued and guttural. In most of his scenes, he is alone or plays off a mute young girl (Caoilinn Springall) he encounters. Peck and British actress Sophie Rundle (Peaky Blinders) appear in flashbacks of a coupling and subsequent breakup.

There is a parallel plot aboard a spaceship crewed by Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir and Tiffany Boone. Even less happens, though the group does provide the only scene with any levity. Jones, Oyelowo and Boone are good; Bishir has an impressive monologue; and Chandler is … there.

The plot is thin and predictable. The ostensible theme is that family is important, but the movie makes that point by trying to prove the negative – that life without human connection is devoid of warmth (like the North Pole) – which is pretty dreary.

That’s not to say it’s a bad movie, just really mediocre. If you can make it through the derivative survival stories in the middle, The Midnight Sky pulls it all together for some tears at the end.

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Stuart J. Robinson practices writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.

Tags: Caoilinn Springall, David Oyelowo, Demián Bichir, Ethan Peck, Felicity Jones, George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, Lightbulb Communications, Netflix, Stuart J. Robinson, The Midnight Sky, Tiffany Boone.