Director: Joe Johnston
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern, Chris Owen, William Lee Scott, Chad Lindberg, Natalie Canerday

- Reviewed by Tom

Homer grew up in a small depressed, ugly, company coal mining town in the late 50s when Sputnik was first launched at the beginning of the space race between Russia and the US. He watched the satellite pass over and was inspired to build rockets.

Homer and a few of his friends (including the school nerd of course!) set out to become young rocket scientists and build their own rockets in Homer's basement (could this be where the term "Basement Bombers" came from?).

Most of the boys in the town were doomed to become coal miners like their fathers after finishing high school, eventually dying a horrible death of black lung from breathing coal dust for years. The only way out was if the boys got some kind of scholarship from playing football. Homer and his boys were the first to avoid the football scholarship and were able to go to college on a scholarship from winning a science fair for their rocket experiments.

Homer later became a NASA engineer for the Space Shuttle.  He even has his own web site: http://www.homerhickam.com/! (Hmmmm.... The first line of the web site says this "WARNING! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BUILD YOUR OWN ROCKET! SERIOUS INJURY AND LOSS OF LIFE CAN OCCUR")

I really liked the movie since I can kind of relate to that kind of rocket stuff. I used to build rockets myself and have had a few go out of control like in the movie, but none of mine ever blew up (much to my disappointment!). There are great scenes in the movie of the rocket failures, very similar to the old NASA videos but on a much smaller scale.

October Sky is a good happy little movie, not much in the way of violence or language or smut so it is good for all ages.

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