Billy Bob Thornton, playing a guy who is both a Farmer and a farmer, wants to blast a rocket into outer space from his barn. He dreams about as big as a guy can dream, and the charm of Astronaut Farmer is that his close-knit family -- wife Virginia Madsen and three adoring kids -- is with him all the way, functioning as his Mission Control, publicity department and sounding board.

The opening shot, a dreamlike image in which Thornton appears to be riding a horse on Mars, establishes that Astronaut Farmer takes place not in the real world but in the world of fables (to reinforce that idea, the film is set in a town called Story).

Deliberately placing the movie in a fantasy world is a smart move, since "Astronaut" is going to strain our credulity about as far as it can be strained. For instance, when Farmer's quest began to get incredibly dangerous, I had to wonder if his family would still be expected to believe in his dream if his rocket landed on some neighbor's house, killing their dreams for good.

But the movie isn't as much interested in whether this could happen as how a family would have to behave in order to make it happen. The movie's best scenes center on the Farmers -- a dad who is crazy about his kids, a mom whose warmth and intelligence make the dad's dreams possible, kids who have been taught to believe they can accomplish whatever they set out to do. And, if that sounds a little too "Seventh Heaven" for you, the movie also has a wicked, off-kilter sense of humor.