Saturday night’s movie: Space Cowboys

Looking for a distraction and maybe a few laughs, tuned in this Clint Eastwood-directed flick. Very few laughs indeed in Space Cowboys, where Eastwood and three buddies try to get into space 40 years after they blew their chance to be among the first astronauts. The main problem is this movie doesn’t know what it wants to be, so it isn’t very good at being anything. Is it a comedy about the four old farts trying to prove they can still hack it? A melodrama about love and death, heroes and villains? A spy/action story about saving the world from a nefarious Russian plot? Eastwood has made some great films as a director but you have to figure he’s getting just a little too old to play the hero. Donald Sutherland is wack as the geriatric lothario, Tommy Lee Jones is all over the place and probably suffers the most from lack of a center for his character, and James Garner is just along for a ride with his buddies with nothing much to do except smile weakly when called on.