Adam Sandler is best known for his goofy comedic persona, but his most compelling work as an actor often emerges when he plays against type and skews into more dramatic territory. Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 film Punch-Drunk Love is perhaps the earliest example of this, but recent years have seen Sandler continuing to successfully diversify: his performance in 2019’s Uncut Gems garnered widespread critical acclaim and a host of awards, and he was nominated by the Screen Actors Guild for 2022’s Hustle. With that in mind, the notion of Sandler anchoring a sci-fi piece from Chernobyl director Johan Renck conjures up a certain amount of intrigue, but Spaceman — premiering at the 74th Berlinale ahead of its Netflix release on March 1 — doesn’t add up to much, despite another strong turn from Sandler.
Czech astronaut Jakub Prochazka (Sandler) is six months into a year-long mission, dispatched to collect samples from a mysterious glowing cloud in the vicinity of Jupiter. He’s completely alone on his craft, connected to Earth only by video calls with his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) and periodic dispatches to his superiors back home, during which he’s often forced to interrupt official reports to regurgitate advertising slogans for the mission’s various sponsors. The psychological effects of isolation and exhaustion have already begun to take their toll on Jakub even before Lenka stops answering his calls — she’s decided to leave him, but Jakub’s commanding officer (Isabella Rossellini) refuses to transmit the message — so when he begins hearing a disembodied voice aboard the ship and having nightmarish visions of something burrowing beneath the skin on his face, it can easily be chalked up to his fragile state of mind.
That is, of course, until Jakub opens to the door to the toilet and finds himself greeted by the inquisitive stare of a creature resembling a giant arachnid. Soothingly voiced by Paul Dano, the newcomer insists that he means no harm; he sensed Jakub’s loneliness and boarded the craft in order to assist this “skinny human” with his emotional distress. At first convinced that he’s losing his mind — an issue on which Spaceman never takes a definitive stance — Jakub gradually accepts the presence of the creature, christening it Hanuš and welcoming the companionship. True to his word, Hanuš becomes something of a therapist, urging Jakub to confront the reality of his crumbling marriage and the decisions that led him to embark on a dangerous mission with a child on the way.
Sandler’s performance is largely consistent with his other dramatic work, and he gets impressive mileage out of Colby Day’s exposition-laden screenplay, adapted from the novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar. Mulligan, on the other hand, finds her considerable talents almost completely wasted here in an underwritten, one-dimensional role that she could have performed in her sleep; we never get a sense of who Lenka is, other than “the despondent wife.” Surprisingly, it’s Dano’s performance as Hanuš that proves to be the most engaging, his probing questions and gentle delivery creating a stark contrast with his frightening physical appearance; if ever there was an occasion that I needed to accept psychotherapy from a spider the size of a large dog, I’d probably want it to have Dano’s voice.
Spaceman boasts some impressive visual flourishes, like a camera that seems to be adrift in zero gravity alongside its protagonist, but Renck doesn’t fully capitalize on the uniqueness of the film’s setting. The vastness of the cosmos should be a canvas for introspection, but here it’s merely window dressing; it’s Hanuš that spurs Jakub to question his place in the universe, and not the awe-inspiring void of space. Had Jakub been lost at sea instead of coasting through the galaxy, he could just as easily reached the same conclusions, and it feels like a missed opportunity to offer a more profound exploration of the human experience in the face of the universe’s immensity. It’s not unenjoyable, by any means, but at numerous turns Spaceman seems to hint at ambitions and ideas that are as difficult to grasp as the glowing particles Jakub has crossed the galaxy to find.