Space Station 76 (dir. Jack Plotnik, 2014)
Retrofuturism, seventies fashion, and all the attendant social mores of that decade come together aboard Space Station 76. It is headed by Captain Glenn (Patrick Wilson), who is not handling the breakup with his former subordinate Daniel (Matthew Morrison) well. His replacement Jessica (Liv Tyler) has her own issues as she adjusts to her new job and coworkers. Ted (Matt Bomer) is having a rough time in his marriage with his spaced-out wife Misty (Marisa Coughlan), who is having an affair with the station’s resident lothario Steve (Jerry O’Connell). Ted and Misty’s daughter Sunshine (Kylie Rogers) is having a rough go of it and should probably be seeing the station’s counselor. Unfortunately, Dr. Bot’s machine mind really only has one prescription for life’s problems, and that is Valium. Everything will come to a head at the station’s annual Christmas party.
Essentially The Ice Storm meets the lost visions of the Space Age, the film unfortunately does not deliver as much on that promising premise as I would have liked. I’m not sure what went wrong. The actors are talented. The script feels naturalistic even if the situation isn’t. And yet….
Regardless of the slight disappointment I had with Space Station 76 as a whole, aspects of it are still worth praising. I had no idea that Patrick Wilson could be as funny as he is in this, even if his character is right in line with his usual dramatic work. Matt Bomer and his Nintendo Power Glove of a prosthetic hand is good, as are Liv Tyler and Marisa Coughland. The design work is great, too. I just wish there were either a stronger script or a tighter plot, which I suspect would defeat the point of depicting the anomie of both space and the seventies suburban culture that’s emulated here.
oliveresque 