Lucy in the Sky
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: October 4, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
36
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
2
Mixed:
20
Negative:
14
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
ObserverOliver JonesOct 3, 2019
Portman’s delicate and damaged portrayal is mesmerizing. Read full review
65
Vanity FairRichard LawsonOct 3, 2019
Lucy in the Sky is an odd curio, a drama that’s forlornly funny, a comedy of social manners with a howling desperation fueling its engine. I admire the balance that Hawley tries to strike, between the mundane and the sublime. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 3, 2019
I have to tip my cap to such a bold attempt to induce in the audience his heroine’s inner flux and fragmentation. The double-entendre title tells you to expect a trip, and you get one. Read full review
60
IGNChris TillySep 12, 2019
Natalie Portman excels in Lucy in the Sky, an interesting character study that suffers when mixing fact and fiction. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 12, 2019
It is a witty, intriguing film in many ways ... But I also feel the film is unsure of how much to disturb its audience, unsure whether to pursue the chaos and embarrassment of a bungled, noir-ish crime and an unsightly psychological disorder, or to contrive something more emollient: to finesse some sympathy and even heroism for the story’s troubled female lead. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChristian HolubOct 2, 2019
Lucy in the Sky’s attempt to sync cosmological visions with a believable human drama never quite works. Read full review
50
Original-CinKim HughesOct 16, 2019
A conceptual mess if a somewhat engaging one. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 14, 2019
Lucy in the Sky is a Lifetime Original Movie-style melodrama, over-thought, over-scripted and over-directed into something spacey, ethereal and trippy by the guy who gave us TV’s “Legion.” Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldOct 10, 2019
While Portman’s performance is skilled, she doesn’t have enough to work with — the character, as written, just isn’t there. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTom RussoOct 9, 2019
It’s a deep-thinking character study that’s provocatively if imperfectly presented — at least until the story devolves right along with its subject’s state of mind. Read full review
50
The Associated PressLindsey BahrOct 3, 2019
The significant and seemingly random changes, embellishments and omissions make you wonder why they even needed the tether of Nowak in the first place. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOct 3, 2019
Unfortunately, it’s an anticlimactic conclusion at best, full of tacked-on thriller shenanigans that, once they’ve petered out, make you wonder exactly why this story drew the filmmakers’ attention to begin with. The answer to that, happily, can be found in Portman’s every glimmer of nuance. Read full review
50
USA TodayBrian TruittOct 3, 2019
Instead of being an intriguing look at an emotional breakdown, “Lucy” is more interested in being a sporadically trippy (and ultimately forgettable) soap opera that by the end has the camp factor of your average Lifetime revenge thriller. Read full review
50
New York PostSara StewartOct 2, 2019
Portman is always consummately watchable, and she tries her best to telegraph the utter existential confusion engulfing Lucy at work and in love. But the film around her is simply not up to her level. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Oct 1, 2019
Lucy In The Sky ends up playing like some unauthorized Jackie Jormp-Jomp version of the Lisa Nowak story, as though they couldn’t get the rights to the names, or to the shit. Read full review
48
The VergeJesse HassengerOct 3, 2019
The movie focuses so intently on technical craft that it sometimes zones right out. Hawley is still stretching boundaries, often literally, while disregarding the human experiences they’re supposed to contain. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 12, 2019
As narrow as the universe is wide, this dull, sanitized dramatization of history’s tawdriest astronaut scandal has absolutely no idea how touching the heavens might transform a person — it only knows that it does. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeDec 10, 2019
Lucy in the Sky is low on real insight and feels like a psychology column in a supermarket tabloid. Read full review
40
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 4, 2019
It’s always a downer when talented artists pour everything they’ve got into a film that stubbornly refuses to come to life. That’s the case with Lucy in the Sky. Read full review
40
TheWrapCandice FrederickOct 3, 2019
Lucy in the Sky becomes a strange experience that tries to force too many themes together at the detriment of its otherwise fascinating heroine. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 12, 2019
Lucy in the Sky is the odd film that starts cosmically big and gradually becomes narrower and more conventional as it goes along, to diminishing returns. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 12, 2019
Lucy In The Sky has ambitious visual flourishes, a bold performance from Natalie Portman and not nearly enough insights into the peculiarities of human behaviour. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 10, 2019
Lucy in the Sky is an irritatingly self-conscious, maddeningly rudderless and scatterbrained story that bounces all over the place and never finds an identity. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzOct 3, 2019
Sorta-kinda based on the true story of astronaut Lisa Nowak, Noah Hawley’s directorial debut may have started out as a feminist-forward film decrying the fact that women have to work five times as hard to succeed in the workplace, but it ends up being a movie whose message boils down to, “Ladies be crazy.” Read full review
33
ConsequenceAllison ShoemakerOct 6, 2019
The film has spent so much time telegraphing its own depth that it forgets to create any, and thus when that wig arrives, we have no reason to view it as anything other than ridiculous. Read full review
33
The PlaylistJason BaileySep 12, 2019
A wildly misbegotten mess, a goulash of incongruent tones and unclear motives. Read full review
30
VoxAlissa WilkinsonOct 10, 2019
Lucy in the Sky, distracted by its own flashy filmmaking, can’t center its gaze on one goal long enough to convey any of its interests well. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiOct 9, 2019
The most interesting part of Lucy in the Sky is that second act, in which the main character is basically besieged by struggles with her own psyche and the male-dominated world of NASA, and her pining for not just Goodwin but for a return to the view of the universe that only a chosen few have seen. Read full review
30
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 12, 2019
Distractingly over-directed ... [Hawley] triple-knots his own shoelaces here, stumbling over cumbersome metaphors (butterflies, floating) and high-concept solutions to straightforward dramatic problems when he should have just entrusted his leading lady to carry the narrative. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 4, 2019
But throwing fairy dust in our eyes can’t make us think we’ve entered Fairy Land. It just takes a lowdown tale and inflates it until it bursts. Read full review
25
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanOct 3, 2019
It is the story itself that never achieves liftoff. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineKeith UhlichOct 1, 2019
Noah Hawley treats his protagonist’s story as a somber tragedy that at times stoops to trashiness. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloSep 18, 2019
What Hawley has delivered is a garden variety bad movie, proving the TV wunderkind of “Fargo” and “Legion” was not quite ready for the big screen. Read full review
20
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 3, 2019
It’s a dispiriting mess and waste of talent, sunk by a lack of focus, misguided choices and insistently unproductive, at times incoherent clashing tones. Read full review
20
Time OutTomris LafflyOct 3, 2019
While it’s based on the bizarre 2007 story of the female astronaut who drove 900 miles in adult diapers to confront an ex-boyfriend, Lucy in the Sky doesn’t include that intimate detail. Then again, the movie shits the bed in so many other ways, it may have been overkill. Director Noah Hawley (TV’s Fargo) omits the headline-making undergarment, instead stocking up on paper-thin observations about workplace misogyny and mental health in a cloying feature debut that begs to be scorned. Read full review
0
The Film StageC.J. PrinceOct 3, 2019
It’s around the halfway point when this film’s pointlessness begins to truly shine. Read full review
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