It’s always a long way home for Bobby (Sam Richardson) in “Into the Sky,” who can be found in the opening scene of Evan Buxbaum and Drew Mylrea’s bemusing sci-fi comedy face down and butt naked on a golf course, covered in a blue goop that is revealed to be the least sticky situation he ends up being a part of. He doesn’t know where he is, but it doesn’t turn out to be too far from home as it can often be when for reasons he can’t be sure of, aliens have taken an interest in him and pick him up and drop him off when they want to, leaving him with no memory of what happened and no obvious direction once he gets back to earth. Cleverly, Buxbaum and Mylrea have little interest in what happens up above, but rather the chaos this wreaks in Bobby’s life on earth where his wife Brittany (Fiona Rene) has given up on the idea of seeing him again, leaving him as adrift on the ground as he would be in space.
Providing a nice leading role to Richardson, the “Veep” scene-stealer who is always great playing characters a little out of their depth, the film sees that Bobby isn’t alone in the universe or even within his own orbit in terms of how he’s feeling upon scrambling home to learn that Brittany, presumably tired of the disappearing act, has leased out the home they’ve shared to Nico (Sofia Black D’Elia), a would-be party planner who has reluctantly taken on the job of her brother’s (Jon Rudnitzsky) impending nuptials. When she dips into the beer supply at 10 in the morning, it can be assumed that she is about as disoriented as Bobby is when the two first meet, laying claim to the home, but a tenuous truce is made when Nico wants to be spared of embarrassment in front of her family, which Bobby can provide by pretending to be her boss, and she can give Bobby the contact she has for Brittany, who he desperately wants to reconnect with, but has no way of reaching her.
The alien phenomenon is smartly kept in the background as Buxbaum and Mylrea consider how both Bobby and Nico have something in common in feeling left out of their own lives, both having a vague sense of purpose but not having either the right pieces fall into place or the motivation to get on the right track and disassociating as a result. When the idea of abductions does become more literal, it brings Jaden (David Cross) into the fold as a fellow traveler of Bobby, who is more eager than he is to get to the bottom of their strange trips than he is. As much as Cross is a welcome presence – and as the paranoid Jaden, it’s easy to see how he too has disassociated from reality – “Into the Sky” is at its best on a smaller scale, concerned less with anything past earth’s atmosphere than Bobby and Nico’s efforts to stay engaged when everything around them just seems to get worse.
Buxbaum and Mylrea can get away with a lot when they have a great cast at their disposal and some sprightly cinematography from Matt Clegg (quickly building a reputation as a go-to guy for comedies with unfussy but vibrant visuals in such films as “Bird in Hand” and “Save Yourselves”) and restraint is just as important here as any stylistic flourishes they could add when they don’t invite too many questions about the extraterrestrial element. Building the film around a seemingly ridiculous demand of Nico’s brother to import a rare flower from Western Mongolia for the day of the wedding where it will be in bloom for exactly the 24 hours of the ceremony, the filmmakers successfully turn the joke into a touching reminder that with patience good things can happen naturally and the largely unforced “Into the Sky” becomes such a charmer.
“Into the Sky” does not yet have U.S. distribution.