Well I finally watched the movie and thought it was decent. It certainly lacked the detail and subtlety of the anime, but then it ran only a bit over two hours. It ends soon after the rover crash which in the movie takes place simultaneously with the last day Mutta spends in the isolation chamber with the other five candidates. There were a few scenes that I would have liked to see retained, particularly the rock-paper-scissors game. The also changed the green card test so we didn't get to see Mutta's actor jump around like a crazy person.
I thought Oguri Shun and Okada Masaki were solid in the main roles as Mutta and Hibito. Oguri had a tendency to smile occasionally in inappropriate places, but he carried off Mutta's combination of intelligence and goofiness. Asou Kumiko as Serika was attractive though somewhat plain as appropriate. I especially liked Tsutumi Shinichi who played Hoshika, the guy at JAXA who was Mutta's patron. Many characters were axed, of course, including the Jay brothers and Sharon. Introducing any of them would have required too much story-telling to fit into the confines of a movie.
Deniel Young doesn't appear in the movie either. Mutta does end up at the abandoned tower watching Hibito's launch and meets an old fellow there. I wondered why they chose someone with such limited acting skills for the role. At one point he says he walked on the moon, which Deniel certainly did not. At the end we see him sitting in a canvas chair with his name on the back. It was