'Space Cadet': Dumb NASA comedy offers empowerment message that doesn't quite fly

The peppy and harmless but unbearably dumb “Space Cadet” is clearly supposed to be the astronaut version of “Legally Blonde,” but there’s one difference between the two films:

In “Legally Blonde,” Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods puts in the work. She studies hard, she aces the LSAT, and she is accepted to Harvard Law School on merit. In “Space Cadet,” Emma Roberts’ Tiffany “Rex” Simpson gets a shot at becoming an astronaut after her best friend manufactures a phony resume without Rex’s knowledge — but after Rex learns of her BFF’s subterfuge, she continues her training, a decision that could endanger multiple lives. To quote Emma Roberts’ Aunt Julia from “Pretty Woman,” that’s a big mistake. Huge.

I know. Lighten up, right? As written and directed by Liz W. Garcia, “Space Cadet” is such a live-action cartoon, with Roberts turning in a charming albeit over-the-top screwball performance, that it should have started with a title card asking us to turn off our brain cells. Still, it’s hard to root for Rex in this scenario, and it doesn’t help that most of the supposedly brilliant people at NASA are sitcom-level stupid.

Growing up in Florida, Roberts’ Rex always dreamed of going into space. As she says in voice-over, “You know how in a few decades from now, you can go live on Mars? Do you think you’d go?” That statement is our first indication that Rex might not fully grasp what space travel is all about. Turns out Rex had a scholarship to Georgia Tech, but she didn’t go because of a Dying Movie Mom Seen in Flashbacks and has spent the last decade slinging drinks at an outdoor bar and participating in Florida stereotype activities such as wrestling alligators. Rex still has a scientific bent, as evidenced by her numerous inventions, e.g., a gate that protects manatees, but as she’s reminded by a 10-year reunion where she’s outshone by the accomplishments of her former classmates, the life she’s living is not the dream she had.

Time to make that dream come true! Despite lacking the education and training one would need to even apply for a position with NASA, Rex fires off an application (“Dear NASA. ..”) and is surprised but also stoked when she’s accepted to train at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Cue the sequences where we meet the gang at the Space Center, including a bunch of thinly drawn candidates (uptight overachiever, nerdy roommate, etc.) as well as NASA officials played by Dave Foley and Gabrielle Union, and a hunky astronaut/program director named Logan O’Leary (Tom Hopper).

Only after Rex is immersed in the program does she learn she got in because her wacky best friend Nadine (Poppy Liu) doctored Rex’s application with an array of accomplishments, including winning a Pulitzer Prize for a “self-published book on the psychology of massive marine life in the social media era.” (Huh?) It would take Logan about 15 seconds of Googling to learn this is all baloney, but instead, he telephones Rex’s references one by one as if we’re in a 1950s comedy, with Nadine affecting a series of accents and personas to impersonate Rex’s fictional mentors. Oh boy.

As the outer space hopefuls are put through boot camp, we get the expected physical shtick, a potential romance, some half-hearted rivalries and alleged humor along the lines of Astronaut Candidates being called “AsCans.” It would also be an upset if we didn’t get a karaoke scene (spoiler alert, we get a karaoke scene.) The green-screen special effects are cheesy, and just about everyone in the cast goes big with their line readings, as if louder will somehow translate to funnier.

“Space Cadet” wraps itself in the trappings of a female empowerment story, but it actually celebrates using deception and taking shortcuts. Rex Simpson is no Elle Woods, and this story is more “Illegal, Need Bond” than “Legally Blonde.”