How do you describe a film like writer/director Jack Plotnick’s Space Station 76? It seems like a comedy, but it does not have very many laughs to it. It does not feel as if it needs to be funny either. Instead it seems a strange reflection of 1970s American family life, transported improbably from suburbia to a fictional space station in some alternative space-faring reality. It is weird but also deliberately low-key. I worry many will come to the film expecting broad parody; instead they get subtle parody, I suppose. A lot of viewers will likely bounce straight off the piece. A select few, however, will embrace it.

Jessica Marlowe (Liv Tyler) arrives at space station Omega 76 as a replacement co-pilot. She immediately finds herself at odds with her commanding officer, Captain Glenn Terry (Patrick Wilson), who nurses his secrets as closely as he nurses his liquor. She also represents a challenge to Misty (Marisa Coughlan), the ship’s self-centred nutritionist and wife to mechanic Ted (Matt Bomer) – particularly when she forms a bond with Misty’s young daughter Sunshine (Kylie Rogers).

There is a largely unspoken maze of illicit relationships and interpersonal troubles between the station’s various crew members, who also include Jerry O’Connell as Steve and Kali Rocha as his wife Donna. Some are having affairs. Some present as satisfied while they are deeply unhappy. Some are not getting the affection they desire. Others are mourning the affection they have lost. Nowhere on the station is anybody who seems wholly and authentically happy with their life – either personal or professional.

The film is littered with amusing little touches and elements, whether it is all the 1970s-style smoking on deck, or the robot psychiatrist, or the wink-and-nod cameo by 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s Keir Dullea. The characters’ various dilemmas and hang ups, however, are largely played straight. They are not quite fleshed out enough to resemble real people, but they certainly seem driven by real problems.

Performances have a strange, overly earnest quality that makes them resemble sitcom characters. Liv Tyler plays her part with a deliberately over-earnest quality, while Patrick Wilson goes flat and wooden in a manner akin to Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy. Kylie Rogers is strangely the most rounded and emotionally resonant actor of the film, and turns her role as Sunshine into a gradually unrolling personal tragedy.

It is a drama, but one cannot really take it seriously. It is a comedy, but one is never going to laugh out loud. Is it science fiction? Its setting is for sure, but nowhere does it really generate drama or narrative out of scientific ideas. All of this at the same time, and also infused with an unerring ability to fascinate. I was not necessarily gripped, but I was fascinated. I was not entirely thrilled, but I was definitely entertained. Space Station 76 is a strange little work that is ultimately worth seeking out, and also a textbook example of why genre, as a means of dividing narrative art into easily marketable segments, is always doomed to ultimately fail.

Space Station 76 was recently re-released in Australia on bluray and DVD by Via Vision Entertainment. Click here for more details.