Five Star Day & Astro-Twins

Breaking Glass Pictures

Seeing as astrology rarely appears in mainstream movies, you bet I was excited to receive an email asking me to review the movie Five Star Day. With a tagline: One Horoscope Infinite Possibilities, it had promise. After all, this resembles my personal credo.  The premise is kind of interesting as well - Jake (Cam Gigandet) whose newspaper horoscope has predicted a five star day of success on his birthday, experiences the exact opposite. So Jake via the internet, tracks down three people who also share his exact birth date so he could see how their birthday (the most astrologically powerful day of the year, Jake says) turned out. I like the experimental idea. It sounds plausible --and who doesn’t want to find out how different/similar they are to their  own ‘astro-twin’?

I met my own astro-twin last fall when she came to me for probably the most difficult reading I’ve ever given. We weren’t born in the same hospital, or even part of the world, but we were born on the same day and year, and when our charts were rectified to account for the differences in time and place, the only difference between her chart and mine was her Aries Moon was about 4 degrees earlier than mine. Everything else, aspects, rising sign and house position of planets, was exactly the same -- so much so that when I emailed her a copy of her chart, I accidentally emailed her my own! Yet after exchanging biographical life stories, that was about the only similarity we shared, which actually shook my faith in astrology --at least at first. Eventually I chalked up our differences to contrasting cultural, sociological backgrounds. But I still think about it.

Something similar happens to Jake. Jake visits his astro-twins and their lives and person are very different from his, and yes, each one of them had a similarly terrible birthday, too. His interviews with his astro-twins are investigational research material for a paper he’s writing for his ethics class about how astrology is a lie (didn’t like that part). Yet, in the end it all comes together...and in hindsight Jake realizes that while seemingly fated negative events happen they just aren’t, in a sort of ‘blessing in disguise’ way. 

The movies’ end doesn’t tie up neatly though, at least not for astrology. “Astrology is a lie”, the paper Jake is presenting to his Ethics class, he still delivers in a rambling inchoate way, now star-struck (but by one of his astro-twins). Many people do have ethical questions about Sun Sign columns: some are written in a predictive style that’s almost doomed to fail, while others are written in imaginative, creative style that opens us up to the myriad possibilities of the day. Yet Jake brings no new observations, or even ethical questions, to this. 

Unfortunately, even with a unique premise, the plot is thin and Jake -a young hunk with an angel's face- well, judging from the amount of time the camera lingers, is supposed to be mesmerizing. Still, I'd watch it again. I want astrology in the movies more, and a part of me appreciates Five Star Day for trying.