Director: Johan Renck 
Starring: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano, Kunal Nayyar, Isabella Rossellini, Lena Olin  
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 107 mins

Spaceman is the new film by Johan Renck, most famous for the Emmy award-winning 2019 television series Chernobyl. This is a sci-fi drama based on a 2017 novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, by Jaroslav Kalfař. Adam Sandler plays Jakub Procházka, a Czech astronaut who is 189 days into a solo space mission on the outskirts of Jupiter. He’s sent to investigate the ‘Chopra cloud’, a vibrant cloud with a purple hue visible from Earth and he’s left behind his heavily pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan), who is no longer answering his video calls. The cloud may well hold the answer to the origins of everything and Jakub is one of a select few astronauts who’s willing to spend such a long time apart from a loved one. 

Things then get rather strange. A seemingly super intelligent arachnid (voiced by Paul Dano) suddenly materialises on the spacecraft, who tells Jakub of the destruction of his homeland. Over the course of the film, the two bond as the spider begins to better understand humans and more specifically Jakub’s memories. 

Spaceman is an interesting and occasionally visually arresting sci-fi that probably would have worked better as a short story than a feature length film. It becomes rather schmaltzy and doesn’t leave much to audience interpretation. The central core themes of love and feelings of remorse also aren’t particularly original. It feels like a less assured mash-up of Ad Astra, coupled with the stoicism of Damien Chazelle’s First Man. 

Still, the performances are worthy of praise. Adam Sandler turns in an atypically restrained performance and is pretty good as the astronaut slowly beginning to lose his mind. Renck does a good job of portraying the claustrophobic and lonely conditions Jakub lives in, with the malfunctioning toilet and cameras understandably driving Jakub round the bend. 

Carey Mulligan is promising as Lenka, but unfortunately underwritten but it’s still a redeeming choice of film after Maestro. Isabella Rossellini is excellent as Commissioner Tuma, the stern commanding officer of the mission who does her utmost to prevent Jakub from learning of Lenka’s diminishing feelings for him. 

While Spaceman is a little under-baked and missing a sense of awe, Renck’s second full-length film has some worthy elements. Sandler turns in a committed performance and there are some initial promising ideas but the film ultimately leans too heavily on obvious exposition and a rather underwhelming central overarching theme that doesn’t justify the full run time. 

⭐⭐⭐ (Good)