THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE

Name: THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE
Item: THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE
Author: Tess Farrand

"New Love Overcomes Grief"

Content: -2 Extreme caution for older teenagers and adults.

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Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE is a romantic drama about a 17-year-old teenage girl with musical talent who’s still grieving the sudden death of her sister. Lennie Walker has lost her interest in music. However, she’s pulled out of her grief by a budding romance with Joe, a new male student in her high school’s music classes. Lennie’s complicated relationship with her sister’s equally devastated boyfriend, Toby, starts to affect Lennie and Joe’s new love.

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE has some entertaining, inspiring and touching moments. However, the quirky moments and character motivations and transformations don’t always work. Also, the grief Lennie and Toby display is sometimes over the top. THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE has a light Christian worldview. For example, Lennie says she likes to study Catholic saints. Also, the movie’s plot problem is overtly solved by signs that are directed from Heaven. That said, the movie’s Christian worldview is a little too light. Also, it’s marred by some strong Romantic elements, foul language, lewd jokes in one short sequence, and references to smoking marijuana. MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE.

Content:

(C, RoRo, LL, V, S, DD, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light Christian worldview with a light Catholic context, light talk about saints and the plot problem is solved by “signs” in the world directed from Heaven that [SPOILER] lead the male love interest back to the story’s female protagonist, mitigated by some strong Romantic elements and female lead’s strong emotional reaction to her sister’s death, which her grandmother thinks has become too obsessive and causes her concern but also leads to conflict between them

Foul Language:

Six obscenities, two profanities involving Jesus and Christ, 14 light profanities, and one teenage girl texts “WTF” to another teenage girl

Violence:

Light violence occurs such as teenage girl collapses in classroom and dies of a heart condition, it is later revealed that her mother died of a similar condition, surviving sister is show visiting her sister’s open coffin in one scene

Sex:

References to male erection are treated partially as a joke in one short sequence, lead female’s older sister confides to younger sister that she and her boyfriend had intercourse and planned to get married but the older sister dies a natural death, [SPOILER] later it’s revealed the dead sister was pregnant, a reference to sperm donations, and dead sister’s grieving boyfriend and grieving sister kiss several times even though the female protagonist has a crush on another boy from her high school

Nudity:

No nudity

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No tobacco smoking but female protagonist’s uncle smokes marijuana in one scene, and his grieving niece berates him for smoking too much marijuana in another scene; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Family dysfunction.

More Detail:

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE is a romantic drama about a 17-year-old teenage girl with musical talent who’s still grieving over the sudden death of her sister and is pulled out of her grief by her budding romance with a male student in her high school’s orchestra. THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE has some entertaining, inspiring and touching moments, but the quirky moments and character motivations don’t always work, and the movie’s Christian worldview is too light and contains many light profanities and other foul language.

As the movie opens, 17-year-old Lennie Walker is struggling with overwhelming grief over her older sister, Bailey’s, sudden death of a heart condition at school. Lennie spends most of her days in her room mourning her sister or writing notes to her sister and attaching them to bushes and leaves in the nearby redwood forest.

Lennie and Bailey were taken in by their grandmother, Fiona, when their single mother died of a similar condition when they were young. Their grandmother is a painter and grows gigantic roses outside her large rustic house near a redwood forest in Northern California. Meanwhile, their Uncle Big has had to be a surrogate father to the two sisters.

Lennie’s grandmother has become concerned that Lennie is too obsessed with her sister’s death. Meanwhile, Lennie is upset that everyone else has moved on from Bailey’s death. In fact, Lennie is so obsessed with her sister’s death that she’s lost all interest in her music. She also no longer wants to go to Juilliard, the famous art school in New York. So, when she returns to orchestra class for the first time since Bailey’s death, she surrenders her seat as the first clarinet chair in the school orchestra.

Like most of the other girls in her school, Lennie swoons over one of the new music students, a light-skinned black student named Joe Fontaine. Though the chances of her dating Joe look very slim, Lennie finds herself engaging with Joe on a personal basis. He wants her to play music with him, but she keeps refusing.

Meanwhile, however, Lennie realizes that her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Toby, is grieving Bailey’s death as strongly as she is. Their grief draws them together, and they eventually kiss, but as soon as they do, they are both wracked with guilt. Especially Toby, who confides in Lennie that he and Bailey had decided to get married before her sudden death. Oh, and by the way, Bailey was pregnant with Toby’s baby when she died.

At the same time, Joe begins to break down Lennie’s defenses. Romance starts to blossom between them, and a much happier Lennie starts to regain her interest in music.

Since Joe is the one she really wants, Lennie breaks things off with Toby, who’s still wallowing in his grief over Bailey. However, Toby keeps hanging around her grandmother’s house, helping Lennie’s grandmother with tending her roses.

Besides its love triangle, which is wrapped up in Lennie’s grief over her sister’s sudden death, THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE has some quirky moments of magical realism. For example, in one scene, the forest seems to come alive when Lennie is hiking there with the journal she uses to write notes to her sister. Also, when Lennie and Joe play music together in another scene, they start magically floating in the air.

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE has some entertaining, inspiring and touching moments. However, the quirky moments and character motivations and transformations don’t always work. Also, Lennie’s grief for her sister is so overwhelming that she’s not always an easy, appealing character to watch. Some viewers may even want to slap her and say, “Snap out of it, girl!” Other times, though, the grief she displays is very moving.

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE has a light Christian worldview, with a light Catholic twist. For example, Lennie is fascinated by Catholic saints. In one scene, she tells Toby he reminds her of St Francis of Assisi. Also, the plot problem that comes between Lennie and Joe in the third act is solved by “signs” directed from Heaven.

That said, the movie’s Christian worldview is a little too light. Also, it’s marred by some strong Romantic elements, foul language and some lewd jokes in one short sequence. Finally, the older uncle is shown smoking marijuana in one scene, but Lennie rebukes her uncle for smoking it too much in another scene.

MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE.