Moon and Back, The
Entry updated 27 April 2026. Tagged: Film.
US film (2022; some sources say 2023). Lionsgate. Directed by Leah Bleich. Written by Bleich. Cast includes P J Byrne, Nat Faxon, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Molly Jackson, Taiv Lee, Isabel May, Roman Michael and Missi Pyle. 74 minutes. Colour.
This is a film of associational interest because it depicts the making of an amateur sf film. Teenager Lydia Gilbert (May) is distraught and moody following the death of her father Peter Gilbert (Faxon), but she discovers in her father's Computer an unfinished Space Opera script that he wrote for an extravagant sf film. No detailed plot summary is ever provided, but its story appears to be heavily influenced by the Star Wars films. Having inherited her father's proclivity for filming with a handheld camera, she resolves to film the script, helped by her nerdy friend Simon (Gutierrez-Riley), a sympathetic high school counsellor (Byrne), her mother Diane Gilbert (Pyle), her mother's friend George (Michael), and a few of her fellow students. With no budget to speak of, the special effects are understandably pathetic, including some crude space helmets, but the scenes that we observe do have a sort of klutzy charm. Because New York University allows applying students to submit personal statements in any medium, she sends her film there as part of her application; the implicit happy ending is that she will be accepted, allowing her to stay in touch with Simon, who has been accepted by Columbia University, also in New York City.
Considered as a commentary on sf, Peter's script seems silly and childish, making it appropriate that it is filmed in a silly and childish fashion. It should also be noted that in periodic clips from home movies showing Peter playing with his growing daughter, he sometimes acts like an overgrown child, precisely the sort of person who would enjoy and wish to emulate the Star Wars films. How making the film enables her to better deal with her father's death is not clear, but the ending for the film that she writes does involve the leading characters marrying and having a daughter, illustrating the very twenty-first-century tendency to regard sf films as a way to affirm family values. [GW]
links
previous versions of this entry