The film’s mood swings irritated me constantly. I quickly grew tired of the emotional whiplash and artificiality of this film. Just randomly quirk in such a try-hard, artificial way. I didn’t have a good time with this one, folks.

The Sky is Everywhere is about a teenage girl who loses her sister who was her best friend and confidant. She’s lost and doesn’t know what to do… and so is her sister’s boyfriend. But she tries to work through it, quits the school band, has emotional moments with the boyfriend, and then meets another boy to (literally) swoon over.

This movie has boing sound effects when it refers to a man’s penis… as if Beavis and/or Butthead was let into the editing bay one day. And the movie scatters other weird, random sound effects into the film… but only occasionally. These sound FX aren’t consistent enough to give the movie a personality… they just get injected randomly and sporadically and make you wonder what the film’s tone really is. The film’s attempts at fun and quirky are so at odds with its emotional core that it grows irritating and distracting.

Because the movie does try – sometimes successfully – to show the girl’s grief. Its in these (somewhat rare) moments that I can connect with the film. Yet it doesn’t remain there long before going wandering off into random flights of fancy. It has – once again random and sporadic – moments of magical realism that are lovely to look at but feel artificial. They aren’t coherent to the rest of the movie’s tone, feel, and message.

I frankly started to hate the characters and their whiplash-inducing moods, emotions, and decisions. I didn’t find them believable as human beings and I kind of hated the love triangle they half-heartedly try to set up. It’s frankly kind of gross and I get the movie thinks so too but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to throw my shoe at the screen when the kissing and the histrionics start.

This movie is just weirdly misguided and artificial. It’s as though a goth kid were trying to emulate a quirky romantic comedy and failed. And since this is – somehow – an A24 production, maybe that makes sense.

Score: 66