Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Sky is Everywhere’ on Apple TV+, a YA Dramedy That Whips Together Whimsical Annoyance With Teen Melodrama

Apple TV+ gets in on the YA game with The Sky is Everywhere, an adaptation of Jandy Nelson’s novel, with Josephine Decker directing (following up her exceptional 2020 biodrama Shirley). Grace Kaufman leads, playing a teen in the throes of heavy-duty grief, while also in the throes of some heavy-duty Directorial Vision. So don’t expect the usual hanky-filler fodder, because Decker gussies up this dramedy with frequent flights of visual whimsy. Now let’s see if that’s something we might want to sit in front of for 100 minutes or so.

‘THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE’: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Lennie (Kaufman) and her older sister Bailey (Havana Rose Liu) were attached at the hip. They used to cavort through the woods together, and splash in the brook, and keep no secrets between them. But Bailey – well, she succumbed to the same heart condition that killed their mother, right in the middle of theater rehearsal. She was playing Juliet. Bang. She slumped to the stage and that was it. Lennie laments in voiceover how only her world stopped, and the rest of it kept turning. All she could do was read Wuthering Heights over and over again, wallowing in its turbulent romance.

Two months later, Lennie pulls on the sweater Bailey was wearing when she died and goes to school for the first time since. You need to know this stuff about Lennie: She’s an extraordinary clarinetist, extraordinary enough that there’s a scene in which she sits in front of a piece of sheet music that says JULLIARD AUDITION; problem is, during band rehearsal, all that comes out of the instrument is SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUONNNK. She sits next to Rachel (Julia Schlaepfer), the mean girl who takes advantage of Lennie’s emotional fragility and challenges her for first-chair clarinet – and Lennie just forfeits. She R-U-N-N-O-F-Ts to the woods where she writes little bits of poetry or philosophical questions or painful laments (“I wish my shadow would get up and walk beside me”) on scraps of paper or sheet music or fallen leaves, then drops them on the ground or sticks them in tree bark, etc., scattering her feelings to the wind.

Lennie’s bestie is Sarah (Ji-young Yoo). They’re tight. When Lennie lashes out, Sarah is OK with it – she gets a lifelong pass for what she’s been through. (Sarah’s a sweet kid.) Lennie’s crush is Joe (Jacques Colimon), the cutest guy in band – he plays trumpet and guitar and has a mop of curls and oh, that smile, it just GLOWS. Did Joe just catch her eye, or was it actually Rachel’s? Argh. But then Joe follows Lennie into the woods one day and tries to cheer her up, tries to get her to play music with him. There’s a spark. But what about Rachel? Didn’t Lennie see them getting ice cream together? DOUBLE argh.

We need to talk about Lennie’s home. It’s a warm, lovely, loving place. She lives with her Gram (Cherry Jones) in a NorCal paradise – quaint home, woodsy locale, impossible garden full of a billion blooming roses. Her sweetheart pothead uncle Big (Jason Segel) lives with them; I think he’s a hot air balloon pilot? Lennie won’t let Gram clean out Bailey’s stuff. The sisters shared a room and the more Bailey’s clothes and blankets are scattered about, the more Lennie feels as if she’s not gone. Out in the garden, Toby (Pico Alexander) digs and drills and whatnot. He was Bailey’s boyfriend, and he, understandably, is a wreck. Toby and Lennie bond over their mutual wreckdom, sharing painful moments of grief; they hug; they kiss; oops? Yeah, probably. No, definitely. Oops.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Sky is Everywhere stands apart from the usual YA tearjerk snotblasters by being part The Book of Henry (which is terrible), part The Edge of Seventeen (which is wonderful). That it doesn’t invoke The Fault in Our Stars, or the one with the sad kid and the girl on crutches, or the crummy one with Cara Delevingne (no, not that one, the other one) is novel, I tell you. Novel!

Performance Worth Watching: Credit Kaufman’s earnest performance for keeping the core truth of the film alive, keeping us invested in the material despite its distracting eccentricities.

Memorable Dialogue: Lennie asks Gran a hard question, knowing the answer is a tough one to hear: “Grief is forever, isn’t it?”

Sex and Skin: Nothing more than teens smooching.

Our Take: The twain shall meet somewhere between nigh-unbearable whimsy and thoughtful and honest emotional drama – and somehow, The Sky is Everywhere’s two twains don’t wreck despite barreling headlong toward each other on the same twack. Decker clearly wants to subvert the genre by surrounding her downbeat protagonist with upbeat, almost magical-realist, flights of fancy – people floating up to the treetops, the cute boy knocking over the amorous girl with animated musical notes, flower-people emerging from the garden, you know, the stuff of imagination run wild to trample us, leaving us with quirk prints in our foreheads, drowning in a wake of and twee. Oh god, the twee. Those with a twee allergy will erupt into hives.

The film does its damnedest to have it all: the torn-between-two-boys plot, the grueling social and academic pressures of high school, the tiffs and tangles filtered through the teen gaze, the intense melodramatics of bereavement, the halcyon-dream flashbacks to happier days, the set pieces decorated within an inch of their lives, the overwrought visual metaphors, the wholly superfluous stoned-uncle Jason Segel character. Sometimes the comedy catches us off-guard, sometimes it flops hard; sometimes the drama rends the heart, sometimes it’s annoyingly trite. This isn’t the smoothest-whipped pile of mashed potatoes. But it’s functional thanks to Decker’s ambitious M.O. and, and Kaufman’s ability to focus on the core realities of Lennie’s journey through grief.

Be warned that some of the movie’s frivolities may drive you nuts, but it’s also impossible not to empathize with Lennie’s pain, her struggle to redefine herself in the wake of unbearable loss. The drama finds solid ground in the interactions between Lennie and her grandmother. Gram has been through it before, with Lennie’s mother, and Jones keenly conveys the character’s inner conflicts within the margins of the script; we sense Gram’s inner struggle, with her own broken heart, with her inability to discern whether Lennie needs time to heal or tough love. Kaufman’s quite good here, riding the emotional rollercoaster of a life stricken by death and lifted by love. Hold on to that idea, and you’ll make it through – this movie and maybe life itself.

Our Call: Just because we’re rolling our eyes doesn’t mean we don’t care. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream The Sky is Everywhere on Apple TV+