Spaceman is going to confuse the hell out of someone looking through Adam Sandler’s Netflix collection. Families expecting something like a Hubie Halloween in space are going to click on this one, shocked 30 minutes in there are no real laughs to speak of. While families might turn Spaceman off the minute they realize this is a Serious Sandler, the rest of you might not, drawn in by Johan Renck’s puzzler of a film.
The Sand Man plays Czech astronaut Jakub Procházka is a phrase I can’t believe I’m actually writing. Jakub is alone on a mission outside Jupiter, investing the Chopra cloud of dust and particles. Jakub feels doubly alone, as his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) has been unreachable recently, which Jakub’s handlers Peter (Kunal Nayaar) and Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini) have been trying to fix to save Jakub’s mental state and their mission. Out of blue, Jakub hears a voice and presence in his spaceship (Paul Dano): that voice takes the form of a human sized giant spider, very interested in the inner workings of Jakub’s mind.
Director Johan Renck does a wonderful job drawing viewers into Spaceman. There’s a compelling stillness he imposes on the movie, using that purpleish Chopra cloud juxtaposed with the cramped spaceship further juxtaposed with the vast emotional mess of Jakub’s mind. Those visuals, Colby Day’s words, and Paul Dano’s voice ease you into the strangest, most expensive therapy session of all time, as the audience plunges into Jakub’s past to figure out what the hell is going on in his present. For anyone who’s ever attended therapy or poured out their feelings to someone, that level of vulnerability creates all sorts of emotions on that ship: ethereal, fear, euphoria, tranquility, etc. The feelings ebb and flow as the therapy session comes closer and closer to the Chopra cloud, making our time on this mission feel like a strange dream, pulling us slowly into the movie’s wavelength before the CGI climax we’re eventually gonna get.
And props to Sandler for really trying here. He’s alone, or talking to a CGI spider, the whole time, and also giving a restrained, guarded performance like his character probably would be: no traces of Bobby Boucher or Happy Gilmore here. However, the central conceit has a ceiling for how great it can be, hitting it midway though and losing steam as we go further and further along the mission. The rest of the cast is trapped in Sandler supporting performances, making me wish the movie went with no names or straight up voices instead of real actors like Carey Mulligan or Isabella Rossellini, who immediately take us out of the movie we’re watching and don’t add anything to the story. Essentially, the answers of Spaceman aren’t as fun as the questions.
Such as why do extraterrestrial spiders like Nutella so much? Spaceman is in the end a swing and a miss, but unlike other phoned in Sandler pseudo family vacations, this film is a really good at bat, taking the pitcher to a full count and fouling off a few before eventually going down swinging. I don’t know why I used a baseball metaphor, since Czech baseball leagues aren’t really a thing…my bad.