Review of Lucy in the Sky (2019) by Greatmartin — 15 Oct 2019

Was it titled "Lucy In The Sky" just so a few lines of the Beatles' song could be sung? Maybe.

I hadn't been to a movie theatre for 11 days and though I watch movies on TV it isn't the same! My choices were "Jexi" which I would have liked to have seen but the schedule was wrong or "Joker"--NO WAY!---or "Lucy In The Sky". I like Natalie Portman when I see her but I usually don't go to a movie just because she is in it so off I went.

"Inspired by real events" the names have been changed---to use the title song?---and is based on a female astronaut attacking a lover who has been seeing another woman.

The picture starts off showing Lucy (Portman) in space, lost in thought and asking for just a few minutes more. After landing, and at the first opportunity, she signs up for another trip not comfortable on earth anymore with her husband (Dan Stevens). In a brief conversation they decide she will have another child after she returns from the next trip but she knows that will never happen and so the affair with Mark (Jon Hamm), another astronaut, starts. It is here the film goes completely off track.

Lucy looks, feels different, even states that she never felt so alive and instead of following why the change, what happens physically and mentally when you go into space, we get into the melodrama.

The script by Noah Hawley, who also directs, Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi misses the chance to approach a space movie from a different and interesting angle. Hawley's direction does many tricks with the camera to try and see Lucy's big world out in space and the small world she has returned to only making the screen annoying.

Natalie Portman does fine as does Dan Stevens and Jon Hamm but Ellen Burstyn is wasted, as is the title tune!

"Lucy In The Sky" is too long at 126 minutes to hold your interest but as your mind wanders what it could have been helps the time past.