Remember Lisa Marie Nowak? She’s the love-crazed astronaut who, in 2007, drove from Texas to Florida armed with a BB gun, plastic gloves, a steel mallet, a can of pepper spray, and six feet of rubber tubing to confront another female astronaut, her rival in a romantic triangle. While nobody was harmed in what the police assessed as an attempted kidnapping, what made the story a late-night comic’s punchline was the (disputed) tidbit that Ms. Nowak was wearing a NASA-issued diaper on her road trip of fury to avoid potty breaks. The new film LUCY IN THE SKY starring Natalie Portman as Nowak (her name changed to Lucy Cola) takes some major liberties with the story, omitting the memorable detail about the diaper. Nowak’s story was the kind of bizarre tabloid headline ripe for juicy satire like I, TONYA, a fascinating subject and a deliciously strange story of an accomplished woman who throws it all away on impulse. Instead, LUCY IN THE SKY wants to take an arty and serious look at the story and the result is a self-indulgent snooze that will have audiences checking out long before the closing credits appear. It’s a huge waste of time and talent.
With a true story as loopy as this one, it pays to cast intelligent-looking actors who can delude you into feeling as if you’re watching something interesting. With her natural class and beauty, Portman gives a fair imitation of brilliance, but only for about the first 15 minutes. Lucy Cola (if you think that name is awful, her niece’s name is Blue Iris) achieved what few women (or men) have in terms of her career (valedictorian, the cream of the NASA crop). Lucy is introduced floating through the vast void of space, but the character quickly becomes unsympathetic. She’s soon acting out like a spoiled child, staring off into space, experiencing panic attacks, spouting nonsense, irrationally mumbling to herself, and even acting shocked when her grandma has a stroke even though the old woman chain-smoked while wearing an oxygen tank. At her service, she hysterically tears the wallpaper off the walls of the funeral home. Jon Hamm as Mark Goodwin, the manly object of desire, is the nominal villain here. After having his own ‘Big Bang Theory’ with Lucy, he suggests his superiors reject her for the next big mission on the grounds that she’s unstable. He’s right. A bland Hamm isn’t given much to do with the role except look handsome lying shirtless on his sofa, drinking bourbon, and repeatedly watching footage of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Equally handsome is Dan Stevens as Lucy’s cuckold husband Drew Cola but for contrast, he’s given a Ned Flanders mustache and acts like a dork (“Lucy and I met in a cafeteria. She helped me open a catsup bottle. I have weak hands”!). Ellen Burstyn has a few scenes as Lucy’s cantankerous grandma and drops the F-bomb in every one of them. Zazie Beetz (who we just saw in JOKER) does what she can in a small role as the woman Mark dumps Lucy for.
LUCY IN THE SKY does not even work visually, over-directed with ceaseless overhead shots, pointless slo-mo, and the 180-degree camera tilts. Worst is the ridiculously distracting aspect ratio that is constantly changing. The shifting proportions of the black on the sides (and top and bottom) of the frame are arbitrary and non-stop. I suppose this is supposed to reflect Lucy’s shifting psychological state, but that aspect ratio adjusts at least four times in a scene at a bowling alley! It comes off as a gimmick that does but nothing but call attention to itself. Helmer Noah Hawley’s grandiose style plays like a first-time movie director who’s received too much praise for his previous TV work, showing off his new big-screen tools, which is exactly what it is. One gets the feeling the filmmakers started making a straightforward film about Lisa Nowak then got cold feet halfway through when they realized the direction the story was headed didn’t exactly promote feminism or girl power so they padded the script with awkward symbolism about cocoons and butterflies and bees and why the chicken crossed the road. ,
When Lucy is in the hardware aisle at the store buying her kidnapping supplies, she happens to look down and see a blonde wig, which she also needs. It’s unpackaged as if it had fallen right there off the head of a previous customer. If there had been more jaw-dropping bad moments like that, LUCY IN THE SKY may have ventured into so-bad-it’s-good territory, but that’s not the case. It’s deadly dull, its interminable 2+ hours seem far longer. It’s easy to crap on a lame comedy or a dull horror flick, but like its protagonist, LUCY IN THE SKY aims for the stars and therefore has so much farther to fall. By that measure, LUCY IN THE SKY is the worst film I’ve seen this year.
0 of 4 Stars
