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Sometimes, when life gets hard, we just want to leave all of the pain behind and get away for a while. And in Space Oddity, a grieving young man decides that the best way to get away is to start a new life on a different planet.
Space Oddity follows Alex McAllister (Kyle Allen) as he prepares to join a one-way journey to colonize Mars. Alex and his brother, Tom, always dreamed of being astronauts—and after losing Tom, Alex becomes even more determined to make it happen. When he gathers his family to tell them the news, though, they have a whole lot of doubts. While helping his dad (Kevin Bacon) on the family’s flower farm, Alex continues his training and preparation. And when he sets out to get special Mars insurance, he meets Daisy (Alexandra Shipp), who understands his need to get away.
Though just about everyone in town thinks that Alex has lost his mind, some understand that it’s simply his way of working through the loss of someone he loved. In this quest to move to another planet, he finds a reason to get up in the morning—to look forward to the future. And despite the dubiousness of the journey and the company planning it, you just can’t help but love this determined character. He’s so passionate about his plans, yet he’s so adorably awkward, so completely lost.
While Alex’s coping mechanism is the one that makes the papers and becomes the talk of their small town, though, everyone in this family is dealing with their grief in their own way. Though mom Jane (Carrie Preston) is barely keeping it together, dad Jeff just quietly carries on with his work on the farm, and sister Liz (Madeline Brewer) has thrown herself into her work as a high-powered PR rep.
As Alex connects with Daisy and finds that he might have a couple of reasons to stay behind on Earth, the rest of the family goes through their own recovery process, too. The ups and downs of their journey are often funny, but they’re heartwarming, too—making for a lovable story about finding love and comfort through life’s hardest times.
Though it goes through a lot of the steps of the typical rom-com, Space Oddity is less about the romance and more about this family and their struggle to work through their grief. It’s often light and entertaining, but it’s also sweet and uplifting—an entirely charming film that’s touching but not too heavy.
You can join Alex on his journey when Space Oddity arrives in select theaters and on demand on March 31, 2023.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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