Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 92 minutes
Release Date: March 31st, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Director(s): Kyra Sedgwick
Writer(s): Rebecca Banner

No, daisies are weeds.

Alex McAllister (Kyle Allen) is going to Mars to become one of the red planet’s first colonizers and he couldn’t be more ecstatic. His family is too—but for different reasons. Where Alex can’t wait to give his life meaning, Jane (Carrie Preston) and Jeff (Kevin Bacon) are simply happy to see him going outside on his own after self-isolating inside pretty much every day since his older brother’s tragic death.

So, how could they not help facilitate this development? Especially since Kyra Sedgwick’s directorial debut Space Oddity, written by Rebecca Banner, isn’t a science fiction film. To his parents, accepting the impossible is an unorthodox form of therapy. To Alex, however, it’s his reality. No matter how many times he’s told the private sector organization that recruited him is scamming the public for profit, he continues to prepare for its one-way mission and guaranteed oblivion.

Except, of course, that the moment it finally becomes real (he’s been officially announced despite there still being no word on when—or if—training will commence) is the moment he finally realizes there might be some value left on Earth after all. It’s not his parents, their farm, or his sister (Madeline Brewer’s Liz). It’s the woman charged with figuring out whether dying on another planet is something for which her uncle’s firm can underwrite a life insurance policy.

Daisy (Alexandra Shipp) finds the whole thing to be some grand lark like everyone else, but she can also play along because she just moved to their small town and isn’t aware of how Alex’s brother’s death truly affected the family. The more “real” the Mars mission gets, however, the more detail Alex provides with their romance blossoming. And the more worried the McAllisters become in thinking they let him embrace this fantasy for far too long.

It’s a cute dramedy with effective performances. (Although I’d question casting Simon Helberg as a Russian farmhand simply because of the USA vs. Russia space angle, I guess? There’s no need for him to be a foreigner and have to fake an accent.) The script doesn’t quite get to the survivor’s guilt and grief aspect as quickly as you might expect, but I don’t think it derails anything since that knowledge is being revealed to us at the same speed as it’s being revealed to Daisy.

The question is therefore whether Alex will be able to see through his emotions and suicidal ideation to fully comprehend the permenance of his decision. Yes, it’s something he must discover on his own, but his family (Bacon and Preston each get a memorable scene to let their characters have their own catharsis) and Daisy can also help push him there. And what the film lacks in narrative surprises, it more than compensates with heart.

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Kyle Allen and Alexandra Shipp in SPACE ODDITY; courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.