Wow. I never thought I’d say this, but … Adam Sandler should really stick to comedy. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed Adam Sandler acting in a comedy, but -Good God- at least it wasn’t this. Spaceman is a dreary existential nightmare where a lonely Czech astronaut confronts his anxiety in the form of a human-sized arachnid hallucination.
And that, good people, is your film. I kid you not.
Early on, Czech kids are allowed to speak to astronaut Jakub Procházka (Sandler) via satellite. One child accuses him of being “the loneliest man in the universe.” Despite protests, we realize all-too-soon this is true. Astronaut Procházka left behind a pregnant wife (Carey Mulligan) and while he went to explore Jupiter by himself, she stopped talking to him.
The mission is to explore the Chopra cloud (ahead of those darn South Koreans), a mysterious collection of pink in the outer reaches of the solar system; is it a bunch of “Pussy Hats?” I bet it’s just a bunch of Pussy Hats. As he approaches the cloud, however, there’s suddenly a big spider on the ship. A desk-sized spider-like telepathic creature right there on the ship.
They don’t make shoes large enough to squish such a beast properly.
Oh, don’t worry; the spider isn’t violent. That might have made a decent movie. This spider is soft-spoken and boring. So Jakub names it “Hanuš” after a childhood acquaintance he must have loathed with a passion. Now if you think “Astronaut Procházka” is a mouthful, just wait. Hanuš (voice of Paul Dano … say, were there any Czechs in this movie about Czechs?) calls Jaku
b “Skinny Human” again and again and again. Has Hanuš met enough humans to qualify Jakub as “skinny?” That seems hard to believe. Why qualify him at all? Why is this important to Hanuš?
Instead of getting out the bug spray, Jakub has long conversations with the spider as they explore the depths of Jakub’s space-fueled depression. It’s even more boring on screen. I came into this film with a view of Czechs as off-putting hockey-lovin’ slavs. Now I just feel sorry for them. By random chance, one comes across a depiction of Czechs on film maybe once every fifteen or twenty years (they’re “wild and crazy guys!”), and here they are represented by a depressed Adam Sandler in a film that has all the excitement of photosynthesis in action.
I am certain there were bigger points the film needed to make about the nature of life, loneliness, friendship, romance, and marriage, and I’m sure I might have cared a lick if they hadn’t been presented in the form of an arachnid who makes Charlotte look like “SOME PIG.” This movie can be summed up neatly in a throw away moment from act I where the “Skinny Human” complains of the toilet not working. A spaceship is a terrible place for a toilet to be non-functional. And yet, I cannot think of a more apt metaphor for this existential piece of excrement: a spaceship with a broken toilet.
There once was an Astronaut Czech
Who abandoned his wife, what the heck?
But he met a big spider
And together they decide her
Life was more important than “Star Trek”
Rated R, 107 Minutes
Director: Johan Renck
Writer: Jaraslav Kalfar, Colby Day
Genre: WTF?!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who need to see Adam Sandler as a complete performer
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody else
