Review | Berlin 2024: Spaceman movie review – Netflix sci-fi drama starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano squanders its potential
- Spaceman stars Adam Sandler as an astronaut who has spent six months in space and starts to project his fears and isolation into a spider-like creature
- The film has its moments but director Johan Renck struggles to sustain interest into the final act, with a story that gets increasingly maudlin and sentimental
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2.5/5 stars
“There was so much love – where did it all go?” asks Hanus (Paul Dano) in this strange, surreal and ultimately unsatisfying Netflix-backed sci-fi. That Hanus is a giant talking arachnid-like creature that appears to be a projection of a lone astronaut’s fears and isolation is just one of the film’s bizarre elements.
Premiering out of competition at the Berlin Film Festival, Spaceman stars Adam Sandler as Jakob, who has spent six months in space alone investigating an astral phenomenon called the Chopra Cloud, which has “haunted” the skies above Earth for the past four years.
This solo mission has meant leaving behind his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan), who is growing anxious from their separation. Unable to sleep properly, Jakub is cracking up too.
Then he has a nightmare, imagining a spider under his skin. Soon this manifests itself into being, conversing with him as it scuttles around the confines of the spaceship.
“I will neither consume nor contaminate you,” the creature says. “I wish to assist you in your emotional distress.”
Named by Jakub after a man who legend told built an astronomical clock in Prague, Hanus becomes something of a confidante to Jakub, as he comes to understand what he’s left behind on Earth.
Adapted by Colby Day from the 2017 book Spaceman of Bohemia by Czech writer Jaroslav Kalfar, Spaceman attempts to be a film like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, using sci-fi as a way to explore philosophical and spiritual concerns.
For a while, the sight of Sandler talking to a sizeable spider, which addresses him as “skinny human” and takes a liking to hazelnut spread, has its moments. But director Johan Renck (Chernobyl) does not sustain interest into the final act, with a story that gets increasingly maudlin and sentimental.
Classy support aside – Isabella Rossellini brings her usual gravitas to her role as the head of the space programme – there isn’t much emotional nourishment here.
A worn-out-looking Sandler is credible as “the loneliest man in the world”, as Jakub gets called, and Dano is a calming presence as Hanus. But flashbacks to Jakub’s childhood and his early encounters with Lenka increasingly send the movie spinning off its axis.
Even the visual effects don’t touch something like 2013’s Gravity, which similarly dealt with an astronaut’s nightmare in space. The decision to keep the characters’ Czech names but cast American and British actors in the leads also feels curious – just another misstep in a film that squanders so much potential.
Spaceman will start streaming on Netflix on March 1.
