Star City Made Me Think the Space Program Needed a Super

Star City is advertised as a space-race drama. I disagree. It is about an apartment complex with rocket problems.

My notes say this pretty clear, except one corner got butter on it.

They say it goes behind the Iron Curtain and shows cosmonauts and engineers and intelligence people. That is a lot of tenants. Too many for one building if the elevator is suspicious.

The title is Star City. A city has apartments. Apartments have complaints. Therefore this is a landlord show. Do not let the helmets distract you.

I kept waiting for somebody to knock on a pipe with a wrench and say unit 4B is launching again. That would explain the whole thing. Space programs are just buildings that got ambitious and pointed upward.

The cosmonauts seem brave. Good for them. But bravery is not maintenance. If your hallway has spies in it, you need better lighting. If your kitchen has a rocket plan, you need a drawer label. If your city has stars, maybe close the blinds at night. The movie did not say this directly, which is one of its problems.

The show is paranoid. Everybody is looking at everybody. This happens in apartment complexes when one person uses the laundry machine too long. A smarter critic may disagree, but they probably watched the main thing too much.

I do not understand why they go to the moon before checking the basement. The basement is where the real story is. Every building has one door with a bad smell and a man named Yuri saying it is normal. That is space history.

The acting is serious and the rooms look like they have rules. That part works. But the show misses my main fix: hire a superintendent with keys to every launch pad.

Star City proves humanity did not need the moon first. It needed a rent meeting, a plunger, and one guy brave enough to tell the rockets quiet hours start at ten.

Anyway that is the review, unless the theater calls me back.