(PG for brief strong language, ages 10 to adult), this is an irresistibly delightful
movie inspired by a true story.
The United States had the technology and the
resources to send astronauts to the moon, but
it did not have the position on the planet
necessary to broadcast pictures of that
historic event back to the 300 million people
who would be watching. That broadcast had
to come from the Southern Hemisphere. So
NASA sent a scientist to Parkes, Australia, a
remote town with the world's biggest satellite
dish in the middle of a sheep paddock.
As people all over the world waited for the
most extraordinary telecast in
history, the engineers in Parkes had to cope
with the onslaught of
dignitaries, a NASA scientist with his own
idea about how to run things (the
wonderful Patrick Warburton), some
technological glitches, and unexpectedhigh
winds. This is a great movie to inspire talks
about coping with crisis, solving problems, as
the chief engineer's statement that "failure is
never so frightening as regret."
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