The Stars Between Us: Movie Review

A terribly written romance missing the romance.

Often when Hallmark goes for a niche hobby, it’s a better than average movie because there’s an authenticity or genuineness, assuming the writers and director share that hobby. The problem is astronomy doesn’t lend itself to this style very well – for instance, most physicists are introverts who don’t attend solar eclipse parties where they mingle and fall in love.		2026 Directed by: Tim Huddleston Screenplay by: Tim Huddleston Starring: Sarah Drew, Matt Long
The second problem is that The Stars Between Us is not about astronomy. Only one of the main characters is a physicist, most of the movie is about inept journalists trying to cover the eclipse, and attend parties where they mingle with other journalists and random attendees. The third problem, which is very unusual for a Hallmark movie, the main couple do not interact with each other until the end of the movie. Usually we get an entire movie of two people working together, hanging out together and they slowly fall in love over the two hours. Not this time. It’s an entire movie of people just missing each other, and they’re also not even looking for each other, so it doesn’t even matter that they’re just missing each other. The romance cannot be built up if there isn’t any chemistry to test in the first place. Granted the movie does give us a second couple who meet much earlier but they’re just supporting characters and don’t have enough screen time for the audience to get to know them. The only thing about them is they like each other. That is a very boring romance. The main storyline is about Kim and her producer trying to cover the eclipse. The problem is their boss hates them and likes phoning them to tell them how terrible of a job they’re doing. I hate terribly written bosses and this is one of them. Malcolm is the other lead character, and his entire plotline is trying to talk to a famous professor to sell his book. Surely these characters could have some more dimension to them. In fact, most of these characters aren’t written like human beings. The genuineness and authenticity that this type of movie can sometimes capture is nowhere to be found. The Stars Between Us works so hard to fit the formula and then failed on the only important part of the formula: actually building a romance between the lead characters. There is no romance and there is nothing else interesting.