Orbit Ever After (2013)

Now first things first, this family - think the “Bucket” crowd from “Willy Wonka” - have found a way of turning space garbage into soup! Now think what that could do for the environment if we could turn all our junk into a nutritious gloop? “Nigel” (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) is the son of the family who is charged with sitting outside their orbiting spaceship each day trying to collect this fodder. He, however, is much more interested in a girl (Naomi Battrick) whose small craft passes their’s each day and they exchange longing glances. He’s completely besotted and despite warnings from his mum (Bronagh Gallagher) and dad (Mackenzie Crook), though encouraged by his granddad (Bob Goody), he is determined to find some way to escape his daily routine and meet her. When she slings him a metallic note one day, his wary mother consigns it to the soup-tank, but he knows she is up to something and so manages to retrieve some - but not all of of it. What could it say? Has their love any chance at all? This is great fun with an engaging ensemble cast making fun use of some imaginatively designed visual effects to tell us a simple love story. Of the son with the girl; of the family with the son and of nobody with their constantly crashing gravity machine. The ending leaves us hanging on one level yet also answers some other questions from earlier and it packs quite a bit of character into twenty minutes.