Catching up: ‘Lucy in the Sky’ ★½

By Bob Bloom

“Lucy in the Sky” is a project that should have scrubbed before its launch.

The movie stars Natalie Portman as astronaut Lucy Cola, so affected by her time in space that she feels detached and ill at ease when she returns to Earth.

Almost as soon as Lucy walks back into her house and greets her husband, she tells him she will begin training to win a seat on the next space mission.

Throughout the movie, which was inspired — and very loosely it seems — by a true incident, Lucy continually tells everyone who asks that, “I am fine.”

But you know she isn’t. She feels uneasy on the ground, treating it like an alien terrain.

She speaks in technical jargon as if common English is a foreign tongue.

Worst, she makes some rather odd choices, including beginning an affair with a fellow astronaut, played by John Hamm.

“Lucy in the Sky” goes awry because director Noah Hawley, working from a script by Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi, never crystalizes Lucy’s motivations.

And it doesn’t help that many of the plot devices and characters are sketchy and ill-defined.

The movie is following various tangents — including statements about female empowerment, the rapturous and transcendent feeling of seeing the cosmos outside the confines of our planet and issues of dysfunctional family dynamics.

And it does not help that Portman and Hamm’s characters are painted with broad strokes; no subtleties or complexities define their personalities. Basically, she is lost, and he is a horndog.

None of these coalesce into a cohesive feature.

You view “Lucy in the Sky” through the lens of a telescope — from afar and without much detail.

I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My reviews appear at ReelBob (reelbob.com) and Rottentomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com). I also review Blu-rays and DVDs. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com or on Twitter @ReelBobBloom. Links to my reviews can be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

LUCY IN THE SKY
1½ stars out of 4
(R), language, sexual content