******COSMODROME-SIZED SPOILERS!******

A Brief Synopsis

Just saw a new Netflix movie called “Spaceman” (2024), starring Adam Sandler as a lone Czech cosmonaut named Jakub Prochazka who’s been sent to investigate a vast, mysteriously primordial “Chopra cloud” that’s wandered into our solar system and has been visible in the skies above an alternate Earth for the past four years.  

Aboard Jakub’s spaceship, he finds he’s not alone; a mysterious spider-like creature the size of a large dog has sought refuge with him.  The alien arachnid (“Spiders from Mars”?), nicknamed Hanus (pronounced Hahn-oosh) is sentient, telepathic, speaks perfect HAL-9000 English (of course) and acts as de facto marriage counselor between Jakub and his estranged pregnant-wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) back on Earth.

That’s the movie in a nutshell. 

Core Characters

The movie’s lone Czech cosmonaut, Jakub Prochazka (Adam Sandler), is a deliberate introvert who leaves his pregnant wife on Earth while he rockets off to investigate the “Chopra Cloud,” a purple space anomaly that has hung in the skies over our planet for the past four years in this curiously retro alternate-reality. After Jakub befriends an intelligent, telepathic space spider he calls Hanus (after a clockmaker who’s eyes were plucked out by a jealous king), his mind is probed, and we learn Jakub also has daddy issues with his late pig farmer father Ladislav (Marian Roden), who supported the wrong side of history in this universe’s version of the Soviet Union’s fall.  Over the course of the film, Hanus also probes Jakub’s issues with intimacy, while we learn little about the space mystery he’s sent to investigate; other than it seems to be a nexus of space and time encompassing the totality of the universe (!).  Wish I saw that movie, instead…

Note: Adam Sandler really pours on the angst as melancholy cosmonaut Jakub, though he curiously stops short of attempting a Czech accent, which was distracting, since Jakub’s Eastern European identity is so otherwise distinct. This is less Adam Sandler’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” as it is his wannabe “Solaris.” Fitting that the movie’s McGuffin is named the “Chopra Cloud,” since its psychiatric musings reminded me of the homeopathic palliatives peddled by pop-quack Deepak Chopra.

Jakub’s long-suffering and very pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) is at the receiving end of his selfishness.  Lenka is nearing the end of a pregnancy spent almost entirely alone, with various officials in the ESA urging her to play the part of the smiling, supportive wife to her Major Tom.  We see their earlier courtship setting the stage for their later marriage, as the carefree and spontaneous Lenka is pulled down by Jakub, whose eyes remain solely on the prize of space travel.  Ignoring her cosmonaut husband’s many attempts to call her (using a clunky, retro-version of Skype) Lenka flees to a group maternity home, where she’s given emotional support by her mother, Zdena (Lena Olin).  Eventually Lenka and Jakub reconcile after his life-changing journey into the Chopra Cloud in an attempt to save his space spider friend, Hanus. That’s the movie’s life-changing lesson in selflessness that saves their marriage.

Note: Like Adam Sandler, the Oscar-nominated and deeply talented Carey Mulligan (2010’s brilliant organ-harvesting drama “Never Let Me Go”) makes no effort whatsoever to sound Czech, which is an odd choice in a film so fixated on its Czech characters’ identity.  As it is, the characters of Jakub and Lenka could’ve easily been rewritten as native English-speakers, and it would’ve made little difference.  All the same, Mulligan really pours on the dourness, making her seem almost the same age as her much older costar Sandler, who’s well past his 1990s boyishness.

The telepathic and empathetic space spider dubbed Hanus, pronounced “Han-oosh” (voiced by Paul Dano) is an alien refugee who’s slowly dying from parasitic space maggots, yet he chooses to act as a mind-melding space therapist (with perfect HAL-9000 diction) to self-centered cosmonaut Jakub. Despite choosing a career in space, we never see Jakub show even the slightest intellectual curiosity about the arachnid-like alien who’s taken up residence in his spaceship, despite its ability to live in vacuum. Even as the two of them enter the nebulous wonder of the Chopra Cloud, the movie’s focus remains almost entirely on Jakub and his marital woes.  Other than a love of generic Nutella and the soothing sounds of a space toilet, we don’t really learn as much of this potentially fascinating (possibly imaginary) alien as we’d like. 

Note: Paul Dano (“The Batman”) does a fine job with the whispered, dulcet intonations of Hanus, but I kept wondering why the hell didn’t Jakub have a damn camera around, and why wouldn’t he let Hanus be seen by ground controllers via the camera he used for communication?  Call me crazy, but if I were Jakub, I would’ve scraped Hanus’ space snot off of my helmet faceplate and put it in a specimen bag for analysis. Or perhaps Hanus is (as vaguely implied) a fabrication of Jakub’s deteriorated mental state?  If so, a confirmation of that would’ve been a compelling avenue for the movie to explore, as well. It’d also explain how the creature eats faux Nutella and speaks in the vacuum of space.

Harried Mission Control capcom Peter (Kunal Nayyar) is a character pulled between doing what’s best for his mentally-deteriorating cosmonaut friend Jakub, while also dropping everything to play fetch whenever his boss Commissioner Tuma tells him to run off to a maternity group home and plead with Lenka to call her damn husband already. 

Note: Actor Kunal Nayyar is most famous for playing nerdy, girl-shy astrophysicist Raj on the once-beloved but badly-aging sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” (2007-2019). Here, he gets a rare chance to show some dramatic range in a role very different from anything I’ve ever seen of him.  While the role is small, it’s intriguing. It’s good to see Nayyar getting the opportunity to show his dramatic chops.

Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini) is the European Space Agency’s head honcho in charge of the mission to the Chopra Cloud; a purple nebulosity that’s entered the solar system four years ago, and has been visible in the skies of Earth ever since.  Deliberately censoring negative communications from Lenka in order to maintain the morale and focus of cosmonaut Jakub, Tuma is put in the unenviable position of doing what’s right for the mission as opposed to what’s morally and ethically correct.  When Peter fails to persuade Lenka, Tuma steps up and talks to the expectant mother herself. 

Note: Isabella Rossellini is the lookalike daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Formerly married to Martin Scorsese and partnered with many other directors, including David Lynch, Rossellini’s been in some notable films during her career, including “Blue Velvet” (1986), “Wild at Heart” (1990) and “Big Night” (1996).  She first came onto my own radar as the Russian translator and wife of Gregory Hines’ defected dancer in the underrated Mikhail Baryshnikov-starring movie, “White Nights” (1985), which was her debut role after a long career in modeling. 

Summing It Up

Directed by Johan Renck (HBO’s brilliant “Chernobyl”) from a script by Colby Day from the 2017 book “Spaceman of Bohemia” by Jaroslav Kalfar, “Spaceman” aspires to be an arthouse sci-fi movie in the same league as Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” (1972), but without that film’s richer insights into the nature of consciousness. “Spaceman” appears to have nods to the late David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and (Bowie’s son) Duncan Jones’ “Moon” (2009). Despite these possible influences, what we’re left with is a little more than a murky study in marital dysfunction. Perhaps Sandler’s instinctively self-centered cosmonaut might’ve been much better off if he’d never dragged another human being to suffer with him on this deliberately isolating career path. 

While Adam Sandler has impressed with other dramatic roles (“Punch Dunk Love” “Uncut Gems”), he doesn’t quite go the extra light-year with “Spaceman.”  Other cast members make some effort to sound vaguely Eastern European, but Sandler and Oscar-nominated costar Carey Mulligan make no attempts whatsoever to disguise their respective American and British accents. Normally, I’m not terribly hung up on actors getting accents or dialects juuust right, but in a movie with such focus on its characters’ ethnic origin, it calls attention to itself (see: Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood”; or don’t—you’re welcome). Despite the overwhelming ‘dour power’ poured into the performances, this critical lack of detailing with accents feels a mite lazy. 

Like “For All Mankind” or the aforementioned “Solaris,” “Spaceman” is set in an indistinct yet alternate future-present, where the Soviet Union did indeed fall (hence the conflict between Jakub and his late father), while the technology is both far superior and curiously retro.  In this universe, the European Space Agency has the capacity to build large, International Space Station-sized vessels (with faster-than-light communications) yet the ship’s phone looks like it was pulled out of Zack Morris’ backpack from “Saved by the Bell.” Not to mention clothing and hair styles back on Earth remain frozen in time from the late 1980s.  It’s clearly not our universe, though it’s too vaguely defined to really stimulate (let alone sate) a viewer’s curiosity. 

While Jakub and Hanus spend most of the movie’s running time exploring Jakub’s marital problems, little-to-no attempt is made to learn more about Hanus; his species, his culture, anything. All we really learn about this intelligent arachnid refugee is that Brand X-Nutella is his comfort food, he finds space toilet sounds soothing, and that he’s eventually consumed by space maggots. This movie depicts a first contact between a human and an alien, yet all we’re supposed to care about is Jakub’s issues with his estranged wife.  There is little-to-no intellectual curiosity on Jakub’s part, and it’s deeply frustrating. For me, the real story lies with Hanus (even if he is a figment of imagination), and not the melancholy cosmonaut.

After seeing the movie, I’ve already read comparisons with “The Martian” author Andy Weir’s recent book “Project Hail Mary” (2021), which also features a lonely astronaut who befriends a highly intelligent (and sightless) spider-alien.  However, Weir’s novel offers much greater give-and-take between the two space travelers, with protagonist Ryland Grace showing a deeper curiosity about “Rocky” (the name he gives his hard-crusted arachnoid companion).  Rather than Rocky simply acting as therapist for Grace’s emotional baggage, they give solace to each other by pooling their talents to overcoming their mutual threat (a parasitic ‘astrophage’ which is killing the stars of their home solar systems). The intellectually dextrous and refreshingly irreverent “Project Hail Mary” has very little of “Spaceman”’s protracted, navel-gazing melancholia.

While there are bits and pieces of “Spaceman” that are honestly compelling, it’s ultimately a paper-thin story stretched over 109 minutes—and you feel every minute. Despite a few random good ideas and clear dramatic prowess, this murky little movie is a bit of a chore to sit through.  “Spaceman” is less a cosmic odyssey, and more a cosmic counseling session.

Where’s Deanna Troi when you need her?

Where To Watch

“Spaceman” is streaming exclusively on Netflix.