The opening shot of Moonshot (2022) lingers on a barista’s trembling hands as he pours coffee, a mundane detail that grounds director Christopher Winterbauer’s sci-fi romcom in the immediate. It is the best decision in the film — and the one it spends the next ninety minutes quietly abandoning.

Set in 2049, Moonshot follows Walt (Cole Sprouse), a barista with a secret girlfriend on Mars, and Sophie (Lana Condor), a STEM student whose boyfriend is already on the red planet. Their arrangement is less chemistry than convenience: they stow away together on a corporate shuttle, each trying to reach someone else. What unfolds is a slow-burn road trip through space, complete with zero-gravity pranks, awkward confessions, and a supporting cast that includes Zach Braff as Leon Kovi — a tech mogul whose arrogance is matched only by his penchant for dramatic monologues about humanity’s future — and Michelle Buteau as the no-nonsense Captain Tarter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDWF3rMwq-I

Winterbauer’s direction leans into the absurdist logic of its premise. There is a scene involving a floating bag of chips used as an improvised distraction that captures exactly what the film could have been throughout: light, clever, grounded in human instinct. The visual palette reinforces the central tension deliberately — sterile whites and blues dominate the shuttle interior, while the Earth-bound scenes breathe in warm, lived-in tones. It is a smart encoded grammar for a film about emotional messiness colliding with clinical precision.

The performances carry more weight than the screenplay deserves. Sprouse excels at quiet desperation — his voice cracks at precisely the right moments, turning Walt’s vulnerability into something earned rather than performed. Condor brings the harder task: Sophie has to be simultaneously intelligent, impulsive, and convincing in her recklessness, and she manages all three. Braff steals scenes without breaking a sweat, and Buteau’s comic timing functions as the film’s reliable anchor when the plot starts to drift.

Moonshot falters when it tries to hold its genres simultaneously. The romance remains underdeveloped relative to the sci-fi framework; the comedy misfires when it leans on Mason Gooding’s Calvin Riggins for repeated flirting beats that grow tiresome rather than charming. The third act arrives as a series of convoluted reversals that dismantle the emotional coherence the leads spent an hour building. Winterbauer abandons the micro-gesture approach of that opening shot — the trembling hands, the floating chips — precisely when the film needs it most.

Moonshot wants to be a meditation on love, sacrifice, and what people reach for when they’re already in motion. It never fully commits to examining any of it. What survives is a modestly charming streaming film — held up almost entirely by two leads who make their characters more interesting than the material warrants. Watch it for Sprouse and Condor. Stop expecting the film to be what its first thirty seconds promised.