After watching Sandra Bullock in “Gravity” somersault her way through outer space for 90 minutes, barely hanging on by a spaghetti strand of a tether, I am very glad to have my feet firmly planted on earth.

Generally when it comes to seeing a movie in a theater, I’m of the “I’ll save my money and just wait for it to come out on Netflix,” point of view. But after hearing all the buzz about the impressive 3-D effects in “Gravity,” I figured I had to see it in a theater; our 10 year-old CRT TV wouldn’t do justice to the vastness of the universe and George Clooney’s charming smile.

And there are some movies that are cultural phenomenon – “Avatar” was another one – that you have to see just to be a part of the water cooler conversation.

When we got home from the movie, I dug out the Wall Street Journal article I had seen about what is driving “Gravity’s” success at the box office. As they pointed out, it is a movie that cuts across all demographics – young, old, men, women, sci-fi geeks and indie-movie fans.

Although I wouldn’t take a young child to it – I’m still a little traumatized by the whole lost in space experience – there isn’t anything in the movie that anyone could take offense at – except for maybe the astrophysicist who was quoted as saying that  satellites orbit the earth west to east yet all the satellite debris was shown orbiting east to west. But even he added that the liked the movie a lot.

All the other movies made in 3-D just seem like practice runs for the way the technology was used in “Gravity.” I knew it was really effective when I realized I was ducking when some of the pieces of the spaceship were hurtling toward my face. When the wrench was floating away from Sandra Bullock, I wanted to reach out and give it a little push to make sure she could grab it.

I’m quite sure Sandra should start practicing her acceptance speech for the Oscar’s. I’ve never been a big fan of hers but she did a great job. I was so glad that the writers didn’t choose to make the dialogue full of snappy comebacks but kept her character serious and sounding like the rocket scientist that she portrays.

After watching Sandra’s character survive fire, ice, water, oxygen deprivation, figure out Russian and Chinese space stations, get slammed into more metal than a car in a demolition derby and at the end, rise from the sea looking fabulous in a tank top and bike shorts, I left the movie feeling totally empowered…and a little nauseous from all the weightlessness.

But whatever awaits me on Monday compared to what she went through? Piece of cake.