Last night, I went to see the new sci-fi romance “The Space Between Us,” in which a teenager who has spent his entire adolescent life on Mars finds love when he travels to Earth for the first time. While the premise of this movie seems a bit cheesy at first glance, the story explores ideas like confinement, adoptive parents, first love, and adventure with elegance and humor.

The movie begins when the CEO of Genesis, Nathaniel Shepard (Gary Oldman), launches the first ever mission to colonize Mars. However, things quickly go awry when the head astronaut, Sarah Elliot, discovers that she is pregnant while aboard the space shuttle. Unable to abandon the mission, Sarah is forced to give birth to her son Gardner Elliot on Mars and unfortunately dies in the process. This distresses NASA greatly, because they are unsure how raising a child on Mars will affect its health, but are also unwilling to accept the bad press that will surely follow if they make the child’s existence public. So this child is forced to remain on Mars and be raised by scientists.

Sixteen years later, Gardner (played by Asa Butterfield) has grown into a curious and highly intelligent young man. However, he dreams of life on Earth and wishes more than anything that he could form real human connections with people other than the scientists he’s grown up with. He also wishes he had a best friend other than a robot named Centaur that he built for himself years ago. One day, in order to find out more about his mother, Gardner hacks into Centaur to gain access to the ship’s storage. There, he finds an assortment of his mother’s belongings, among which is a USB drive and a wedding ring. On the USB drive, Gardner finds a video of his mother and another man in a beach house. Convinced that this man is his father, Gardner becomes determined to find him.

This, however, is only part of the story. Shortly after finding the video, Gardner logs onto an online chatroom on which he has been messaging a girl named Tulsa (Britt Robertson), a street smart girl from Colorado, for the past few months. While Gardner does not know anything of love, he feels strangely connected to and infatuated with this girl. Under the guise of being confined to a penthouse, due to osteogenesis imperfecta (a bone disorder), they discuss their plans for the future. Gardner promises to come see her, someday, although he fears he will never escape his planetary prison.

This surprisingly changes, though, when a new procedure is discovered that could possibly fortify Gardner’s bones enough for him to handle Earth’s gravity. Eager to experience Earth, Gardner undergoes this procedure and makes the seven month journey to the green and blue planet.

Once on Earth, though, NASA quickly discovers that although Gardner’s bones may be able to handle Earth’s gravity, his heart cannot, for it has been enlarged by the no-gravity environment of outer space. Upset and impulsive, Gardner escapes NASA to find Tulsa, who he asks to help him find his father. The two then embark on a cross-country roadtrip to find Gardner’s father, in which, of course, the duo begin to fall in love.

This story was exactly what I needed to see halfway through the spring semester – an uplifting and incredibly sweet coming-of age tale. Although a coming of age tale has plenty of potential for cringy cliches, this movie surprised me in how unique many of its elements were. While clearly advertised as a romance, I was surprised to see how well the producers portrayed space travel and living on Mars. This advanced filmography made me feel like I was not only watching a romance, but an action-adventure movie as well. I was also surprised by the cast, which I felt portrayed each of their characters beautifully. I personally found Asa Butterfield’s rendering of Gardner to be especially amazing. Butterfield managed to capture the spirit of an innocent and wide-eyed boy, experiencing everything for the first time so well. I truly believed that he had never seen rain before as I watched Gardner experience it on screen. Butterfield also had everyone in the audience “aww”ing as he stumbled over his own lack of romantic experience in a very adorable and somehow irresistible way. However, Butterfield couldn’t have carried this movie alone. Britt Robertson’s portrayal of Tulsa, a spunky and rebellious teen (although she did look a little old to be playing someone in high school) was hilarious. Her sarcasm and cynicism toward the world mixed with Gardner’s overly emotional and sensitive nature made for a hilarious and charming love story. And of course, it goes without saying that Gary Oldman played the perfect Genesis CEO and caring guardian of Gardner when he came to Earth.

This is why I was shocked by the bad reviews that this movie has been receiving.  Various reviews claimed that “The Space Between Us,” was too cheesy for anyone but the most forgiving preteen to handle. I completely disagree. Just because the movie ended happily, unlike many other popular teen romance movies such as “The Fault in Our Stars,” “If I Stay,” and “Me Before You” (just to name a few) does not mean that it was any less “meaningful” or “deep.” The main character doesn’t have to die for a movie to be good! In fact, that lowers a movie’s rating in my mind. I can also see that the movie could be perceived as cheesy because of the romance, but viewers must take one thing into consideration: this is not your average love story. Gardner is a boy who has never experienced love – or anything close to it – before, so everything is exaggerated. If everyone were to think back to their first romantic experience, I’m sure that 99 percent of them would cringe and try to take their minds off of it. This is what we get to see in “The Space Between Us,” and I personally found it endearing.

All in all, while this movie has gotten mixed reviews, I would definitely recommend seeing it. The movie is very touching if you let it be and simply takes a different and frankly more realistic approach to falling in love for the first time, as well as finding your place not just on Earth, but in the universe. I promise that this movie will put a smile on your face, whether from Gardner’s first reactions to ordinary things like rain and horses, or from Tulsa’s answer when Gardner asks her what her favorite thing about Earth is and she replies, “You are, Gardner.”