Believe it or not, I always find myself rooting for Adam Sandler. Yes, his films are often buffoonish scatalogical messes, but when he’s good, he’s very good (see Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems for examples of top-notch Sandler). But, against my better judgment, I’m a Sandler guy, and I’ve come to accept that. Swedish director Johan Renck’s Spaceman comes closer to peak Sandler than I would have expected, but falls short in areas that, quite honestly, don’t have much to do with the big lug’s performance at all.
Based on Czech-born author Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, Renck’s film feels far more American than it should, especially considering its roots in Czech culture. Sandler (who plays Jakub, a Czech astronaut on a solo mission to investigate an anomaly on the far side of Jupiter) and the rest of the cast (which includes Carey Mulligan, Lena Olin, and Isabella Rossellini) do as well as can be expected with their accents, but Spaceman’s troubles go beyond mere enunciations.
What’s disappointing is that Colby Day’s screenplay leaves plenty of room for Kubrickian or Tarkovskian experimentation and philosophizing but fails to commit to anything remotely resembling challenging cinema. Instead, Spaceman feels like a movie attempting to ape 2001 or Solaris, but lacks either the chops or the passion (or both) to successfully pull it off. I’m not mad at it, but I am disappointed in its inability to shine where it clearly could have.
What I do like is Paul Dano as Hanuš, a giant alien spider that befriends Jakub just as his loneliness and regret start to get the best of him. By probing Jakub’s memories, Hanuš gains not just a keen insight into the troubled man’s life and personal failings but also into the failings of humanity as a whole. In this way, Hanuš acts as a strangely appealing combination of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Q (iconically played by John de Lancie) and the wise and philosophical talking gorilla from Daniel Quinn’s 1992 novel Ishmael. As strange as this comparison may seem, I nevertheless found myself unable to shake its weird implications, especially when weighed against Jakub’s inclination to dwell on past mistakes instead of finding solutions to present problems—something many of us who suffer from depression and anxiety can easily relate to.
But, even if the dynamic between Jakub and Hanuš (and thus between Sandler and Dano) has potential, it isn’t realized in a satisfactory way. And while the film’s climax isn’t a complete failure (it’s surprisingly emotional, considering the circumstances), it isn’t a particularly memorable one either, regardless of Sandler and Dano’s interesting, if somewhat underdeveloped, chemistry.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.