It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

As Good As It Gets

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's hard to describe this movie even with spoilers, let alone without. It's weird like Lynch did it, and reminds me of Jarmusch too. Strange combination of old school space SF, western, noir and musical. Extremely low budget and yet very effective. Cory McAbee, in Chaplin manner, brings us one man show. He wrote the script, directed, played leading role and wrote most of the music. And music is story for itself. It is impossible to picture it verbally. This has to be seen and experienced. You have to experience it for yourself.8/10

One of the best quirky indie original off-the-wall comedies to see over and over again. I've seen some indie original stuff and The American Astronaut delivers with unexpected results. Why explain the unexplained? I liked it. You will like it. You won't be able to rationally explain it, but who can explain a Fun-house anyways? It's a Saturday Matinée kind of film. A fun film. An alternative universe where the men grow up on one planet and the women grow up on another. Thus goes the plot of a space cowboy who has to transport a girl in a box, a cat, and a boy who has actually seen a woman's breast. Did I mention that it is also a musical? Well, it is and you don't see that everyday.

Okay, I saw the movie at the Red Vic in the Haight/Ashbury of San Francisco...a perfect setting for an off-beat film where movie-goers can watch a flik from a flea-bitten (j/k) couch while eating' good and cheap confection. Maybe this sounds like an ad for the movie theater, but I find such a setting perfect for how I would categorize American Astronaut: as a couch swallowing, camp/cult SCI FI flik.With its punkish music, it is a caricature of solar system space travel reminding me of Rocky Horror; but yes, it had the disconcert of Eraserhead. It all began on a f'd up bar on an asteroid. And while the ending was perhaps unsatisfying, it ended when I needed it to end...kind of like a Phillip K. Dick novel.I'm giving the movie a very high grade because it was made on the cheap. It made me laugh hard. It left a lot of room for personal interpretation. It is a social commentary. And it was quite disturbing, especially in its view of men and women existing separately.Oh yeah, it definitely had some commonality with The Queen of Outer Space...though crasser. For some reason, I was wondering if SCI-FI had a category called Kitsch SCI-FI. I looked up kitsch and must say that there is nothing kitsch about American Astronaut, especially the low budget spaceship because we really don't yet inhabit the solar system and glossy Star Trek space boats are extreme imitations of truth while even an Einstein cho cho train elaboration is more relativistic to our Earth...or at least way REALer than than captialistic star boat Enterprise.Ultimately, it all felt gay no matter which way you look at it..."Not because he wants to wear it, but because he gets to wear it." It's one of our pseudo hero's funniest lines as I remember it from the movie. I'd own this film if I could find it.

David Lynch meets Fellinni and Salvador Dali in a bar and they form a rockabilly band, and that band then decides to do a musical western comedy as a small noir Indy film.That's the pitch - if this movie was ever even remotely "pitchable".I just saw it and was completely blown away. Not since Eraserhead and the earliest days of MST3K has someone so messed with my mind in a mere 91 minutes.5 stars. The director's commentary was also quite amusing. You're watching bits of the film being projected on a small screen in a bar while the director does Q&A. Lots of "where the hell did THAT come from?" stuff followed by, "well, there were some things going on in my life..." that actually add to the surreal quality of the film. Also, one of those rare Indy films where the quintuple threat one-man vision approach actually pays some real dividends.My only wish is that there were more of this director's work to catch up on. And should the director read this;"Produce! Produce! For the long night is coming wherein no man can work!"Barney Dannelke