Adam Sandler’s career arc is wide and weird. Rotten Tomatoes lists dozens of films, ranging from the wacky “The Ridiculous 6,” which earned a 0% approval rating, to the dramedy “Hustle” that clocks in at a healthy 93%. In between is a wildly diverse collection of movies that vacillate from beloved comedy classics like the goofy “Happy Gilmore” to the Oscar nominated “Uncut Gems.”
His latest, “Spaceman,” now streaming on Netflix, is something new, an outer space marital drama featuring the comedian as a Czech astronaut on a mission to Jupiter, who receives personal advice from an extraterrestrial six-eyed hairy spider, voiced by Paul Dano.
In space, nobody can hear you scream… but a giant spider can read your mind.
Based on Jaroslav Kalfař’s novel “Spaceman Of Bohemia,” the story revolves around Commander Jakub Procházka (Sandler), a withdrawn astronaut on a solo six-month mission to the fifth planet from the Sun. During a live press conference from space, organized by Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini), a child asks him, “Are you the loneliest man in the world?”
He may well be.
He hasn’t had a message from his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) in a long time. Unbeknownst to him, she has tired of being alone and sent him a Dear John transmission, which was suppressed by Tuma. “He’s not doing well,” Tuma says, fearing for Jakub’s mental health. “He misses his wife.”
Left adrift in space, alone and cut off from Lenka, Jakub receives relationship guidance from a large, chatty spider who says, “Your loneliness intrigued me. I wish to assist you in your emotional distress.” Whether the celestial spider is real, or a figment of Jakub’s fevered imagination, their conversations are therapeutic, forcing him to reassess his life and relationships.
“Spaceman” doesn’t play any of this for laughs. It is a low-key but high-minded film about a psychoanalytic spider, longing, loss and love. Set against the backdrop of a space mission, it examines the personal reasons why Jakub would leave behind the love of his life for the isolation of space.
“Billy Madison” this ain’t.
In a quiet, heartfelt performance, Sandler plays Jakub as a flawed man, deadened by emotional distress. It is sombre work, with whispered dialogue, longing looks and loads of introspection. He pulls it off, playing off of the goodwill earned from many years of making us laugh, to create a character we have instant empathy for. It’s another notch on his serious actor belt, even if it veers toward dreary for much of the film’s runtime.
Dano brings a whispery HAL 9000 vibe to the wise alien tarantula. He’s an eight-legged psychiatrist; a strange looking companion who knows how to ask the right questions to fire Jakub’s memories. Although the spider looks like something that may have escaped the set of “H.R. Pufnstuf,” Dano gives him real empathy.
As the earthbound Lenka, Mulligan isn’t given that much to do, but effectively displays her character’s deeply rooted, but conflicted, sadness.
As outer-space dramas go, “Spaceman” has more in common with “Solaris” than it does “Star Wars.” It is a slow-moving movie, with very little action—although a broken, on-board toilet threatens to pierce through the movie’s lugubrious tone—that is more concerned with the human condition; Jakub’s childhood trauma, his fear at impending fatherhood, his deep emotional scars.
Director Johan “Chernobyl” Renck does provide moments of great beauty and compassion, but the film’s listless pacing blunts the effectiveness of Jakub’s emotional journey.
“Acidman,” a new family drama starring Thomas Haden Church and Dianna Agron and now playing in theatres, is a quiet, and sometimes disquieting, essay on a broken father and daughter relationship.
Maggie (Dianna Agron), a thirtysomething engineer on the verge of divorce, hasn’t had much contact with her father Lloyd (Church) a.k.a. Acidman, for decades, ever since he abandoned his career and family when she was a teen.
A reclusive, he lives rough, in a rundown trailer in the Pacific Northwest. “It’s a good place to be left alone,” he says. When he isn’t writing and recording discordant industrial music using the junk that fills his place as instruments, he is attempting to make first contact with UFOs. “Technically,” he says, “they are IFOs because we’ve identified them.”
Maggie travels thousands of miles by plane, train and automobile to reconnect with her father, to check in on him—“When is the last time you went to the doctor?”—and to gain some understanding of his reasons for leaving her behind. In understanding his abandonment, she also hopes to gain some clarity on her dissolving marriage.
“How long are you planning on staying,” Lloyd asks. “I guess I could have picked up a little, if I had known you were making the trip.”
As they get reacquainted on UFO sighting trips with Lloyd’s dog Migo, Maggie comes to realize the depth of her father’s alienation, but finds cracks in his hardened veneer that reveal the man she once knew.
“Acidman” is the study of a relationship in progress. Lloyd and Maggie are strangers, tied by biology and faded memories.
Their tentative attempts at making a true connection are poignantly played by Argon and Church. There isn’t an ounce of sentimentality on display, just two broken people searching for a path forward. This isn’t a story where the characters emerge at the end of the movie radically changed. Instead, the way they grapple with the past, pushes them into the future.
Director Alex Lehmann keeps things simple. The melodrama is on the downlow, which allows the chemistry between the two lost souls in the leads develop slowly and naturally until their fractured relationship finds its comfort zone. It’s an intimate two-hander that takes patience from the viewer, but pays off with a feeling of gentle authenticity.
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to talk about the Ryan Reynolds time travel adventure “The Adam Project,” the Toronto set fantasy “Turning Red” and the contemplative “After Yang.”
“Lucy in the Sky” is the only movie I can think of that would have been improved by the addition of adult diapers. Loosely based on the exploits of former naval flight officer turned NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak, the new Natalie Portman movie recreates the troubled astronaut’s cross-country drive minus one juicy detail—the diapers she allegedly wore to eliminate the need for rest stops.
Portman plays Lucy Cola, an astronaut having trouble to adapting to life on terra firma. After being in space, witnessing the vastness of the world while floating far above it, her eager-to-please husband (Dan Stevens) and teenage niece Blue Iris (Pearl Amanda Dickson) seem hopelessly earthbound. “You go up to space and see the whole universe,” she says, “and then you come back and everything is so small. What are you supposed to do? Go to Applebee’s?”
She finds a kindred soul in Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm), another NASA vet described as “a divorced action figure who likes to go fast.” Casual chats soon turn into an affair, although while Lucy falls deeply head over heels, Mark sees it as a fling and continues to date other women, including new recruit Erin Eccles (Zazie Beetz).
As her mental state erodes Lucy throws herself into training for a new mission until she becomes a danger to herself and others. Cut loose from the only job she cares about the frantic Lucy drives cross country to confront—or worse—Goodwin. “You’re going to lose,” she shouts, “because I’m a winner.”
“Lucy in the Sky” is a character driven drama that offers up only the scantest insight into Lucy’s psychosis. Director Noah Hawley plays around visually, changing the aspect ratio and focus to convey Lucy’s loosened grip on reality but it is all surface and while there are some striking images, the insight never transcends cliché.
Portman isn’t given much to work with. She’s a walking cliché, a character who ticks a number of “interesting” traits off a check list only to have them add up to a less than compelling character. She isn’t aided by a script that requires her to say things like “All systems go!” when asked about her mental state.
The supporting actors don’t fare much better. As Lucy’s husband Stevens is a one note goody two-shoes, annoying to the point where you begin to understand why she wandered away from the marriage. Ellen Burstyn is a bit of fun as Lucy’s potty-mouth mother, but she seems to have drifted in from another movie. Only Hamm emerges more or less unscathed, handing in the kind of tortured leading man performance that allows him to have moments of introspection, like when he watches footage of the Challenger explosion over-and-over before heading to space, and be a bit of a playboy. There’s not much to his character but at least Hamm breathes some life into him.
The story that inspired the film is ripped straight from the tabloids, all lurid details, but “Lucy in the Sky” glosses over most of them (i.e.: the adult diapers) in favor of an oversimplified look at mental illness that never takes flight.
