The Great Dejokeification of Adam Sandler continues with the release this week of Spaceman, a new movie that dares you – honestly dares you – to even think about cracking a smile. Perhaps that’s no surprise given that it was directed by Johan Renck, the Swedish music video director whose career has also taken a serious turn since he helmed the Chernobyl miniseries (gripping, obviously, but hardly a chucklefest). For hang-dog Uncut Gems era Sandler, an existential study set in space is surely the perfect fit.
Based on Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, in Spaceman Sandler plays Jakub, a Czech astronaut (thankfully no accents are attempted) who is six months into a solo mission to a mysterious cosmic formation on the outskirts of Jupiter called the “Chopra Cloud”. Like all good spacemen, Jakub is hoping to make history for mankind, but is also running away from his problems on Earth: in his case, a pregnant wife, Lenka, played by Carey Mulligan, whose needs Jakub has been putting firmly after his own.
In fact, it’s got so bad that Lenka would like to leave him, and has issued a video message to that effect, though Jakub’s superiors, headed up by Isabella Rosellini’s Commissioner Tuma, don’t want to jeopardise the mission and refuse to send it on to him. Still, even from his distant location, Jakub can sense something is wrong, and Lenka’s prolonged lack of communication causes him to start to spiral.
It also initiates the film’s intriguing sci-fi premise: Jakub has a visitor. A giant space spider is probably quite far down most people’s list of ideal travelling companions, but Hanuš, voiced by Paul Dano, who appears inside the spaceship one day, claims to have no plans to gobble Jakub up. In fact, he says, he’s studying humanity and has been drawn towards Jakub because of his extreme “loneliness”. More helpfully still, he seems intent on becoming Jakub’s personal arachnid therapist (“These are your thoughts. I am simply finding them with you”). And of course, it’s possible – perhaps probable – that Hanuš is not a real giant space spider at all, but a figment of Jakub’s over-active, isolated imagination.
To start with the positives: Spaceman looks amazing. The interior of Sandler’s spaceship isn’t all shiny and sleek, but rather a dingy-yet-sumptuous palette of teal and sunflower yellows reminiscent of a Mike Nelson installation; the strange dim half-light Jakub seems to exist in is replicated on Earth, where the effects of the Chopra Cloud have cast everything and everyone in a crepuscular pall. The Chopra Cloud itself is a dazzling swirl of psychedelic pinks and purples of the kind you might have found on a techno-trance flyer in the Nineties, or a Smiggle pencil-case today.
I know, I know, starting with the production design is an ominous sign, but actually Sandler himself – all grizzly-bearded and hollow-cheeked – is low-key and convincing as Jakub. Mulligan’s Lenka is less compelling, a little jarringly plummy, though as we know she’s a whiz at a wronged wife if she’s given enough to work with. Dano? Well, he’s voicing a giant space spider. It’s somewhat hard to say.
On the topic of voices, it’s here that the problems with Spaceman begin. For whatever reason, everyone in this film seems to have been instructed to speak with the lethargic, hypnotic delivery of a depressed masseuse. Paired with the simmering Max Richter score, the effect is atmospheric and then, as the minutes creep by, soporific. But just as the pacing becomes monotonous, the script becomes increasingly clunky, with Hanuš in particular prone to using a cod-prophetic register (heaven forbid he use a contraction!) to deliver touchy-feely space-babble sentiments.
It's clear that the marital-strife-meets-space-adventure genre in general has a lot of potential, though it’s not without its difficulties (Garth Davis’s recent movie Foe, starring Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan, aimed for similar territory but its intimate atmosphere was undone by an overly confusing plot). In Spaceman’s case, the occasional de-aged flashback to happier times doesn’t do enough to give Jakub and Lenka’s relationship any real substance, and the friendship between Jakub and Hanuš, despite some arresting effects (man hugs giant space spider!), remains somewhat hard to buy. For all the promising psychological territory it edges towards, and all the seductive visuals, in the end as an emotional drama, Spaceman doesn’t carry much weight.
Spaceman is out on Netflix on Friday 1 March
Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
