Here’s a movie with so much backstory, you might not even notice the romance is boring and tepid. Well, then again, you might. I did.
I’m not sure why Nan-Young and Jay are right for each other. She’s an astronaut and world-renowned scientist; he’s a bitter unemployed musician. But, hey, opposites attract, right? Suffice to say, there is a bit of kismet there. Jay muscles his way into Nan-Young’s life by playing the “I’m just trying to be polite” game, a time-honored tradition where a horndog won’t take “no” for an answer, but appears polite and business-like about it. This strategy tends to work if the horndog looks like Jay … and it’s darn near impossible to say what Jay actually looks like as this is a cartoon.
FWIW, Jay and Nan-Young are both pushing middle age, but in Korean animation terms, they could be teens. Romance happens when Nan-Young plays a song from her phone that (as far as she is aware) only she knows; there are no known public recordings of the ballad. Well, whaddaya know? Turns out Jay recorded the song and then quit his band, pissed off about whatever band members get pissed off about.
FF to the present: Nan-Young and Jay are suddenly a couple. Jay’s band, The Moles, wants him to rethink his short-sighted ways while Nan-Young desperately wants to go to Mars. She is a world-renowned botanist, so we think she might wa
nt to terraform the red planet, but really she just wants to find her mom, who went to Mars thirty years ago and never returned.
That’s a helluva thing to hang over your new lover, huh? “Ummmm, look, I’m on a short list for Mars, so, I dunno, maybe cancel that spa weekend in case NASA calls?”
Lost in Starlight is a romance … a long, confusing romance. Can we communicate with Mars? What happened to mom? Is the band getting back together? Most televised romances fall apart with even one of these issues. Here, Nan-Young is attempting the ultimate long-distance pairing. There are definitely things to like about this film, but not enough to recommend it … and I’m quite confused as to why it needed to be animated. One last note: Asian animation studios – the word is “comedy.” Because animation is not real, you can storyboard anything you can imagine. Hyperbole breeds comedy. Why has Asia not figured that out yet? Oh, I’m sorry, Ne Zha 2 had a bunch of bathroom humor. I stand corrected.
There once was an astronaut, Nan-Young
To memories of her mother, she clung
On the verge of Mars
Romance found her stars
Now her affair is literally far-flung
Rated PG, 96 Minutes
Director: Han Ji-won
Writer: Kang Hyun-joo, Han Ji-won
Genre: Attacks Mars!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Hardcore romantics
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Scientists
