Adam Sandler is in a difficult position as an actor. I'm not saying we need to feel sorry for the guy because he's likely close to a billionaire. His difficult position that he finds himself in is that his comedy films which are mostly really stupid consistently make tons of money, yet he is absolutely fantastic as a serious actor in films that unfortunately almost always lose money.
Other than that really awful film Pixels I don't think that Sandler has had much to do with the sci-fi genre so when I found out that he was going to have a go at exactly that with Spaceman I was excited to see it. I actually had forgotten that it existed until it somehow ended up on my Plex server and I am delighted that it did.
It is difficult for me to explain what it is about this film that I liked so much without spoiling the hell out of the plot so if what I am saying ends up seeming vague, understand that I MUST do that because I don't want to ruin the surprise for you.
This plot has been done before in that Sandler plays the role of Commander Jakub who is the sole member of a space flight that takes him near Jupiter to explore this strange purple cloud that has been visible from Earth for an undisclosed amount of time. The 500 million mile flight has taken nearly 200 days and he is starting to feel a bit of cabin fever and feel very alone. He was chosen for this mission because of the fact that he does well alone but is starting to experience a very real sense of intense loneliness and this is evidenced by his demeanor that I think Sandler does extremely well.
I feel as though Sandler does a very good job of seeming distressed and annoyed even in his comedy films but in this case it is certain aspects of the spacecraft that is annoying the hell out of him but he has to restrain himself because he has limited amounts of everything on board. His frustration is compounded when the toilet is broken but he is told by mission command that the items he needs in order to repair it have to be saved for other parts of the ship.
A vast majority of the film takes place in a simulated weightless (no gravity) environment and this is something that I have always found amazing in the films that it takes place in. I wanted to know how it is done so I looked it up and you might find this interesting as well
It's from Inception but still does a good job of showing how much goes into performing weightlessness in films. Pretty interesting stuff.
Getting back to the film. Jakub continues to downward spiral in his loneliness when his wife is no longer sending video messages to him and nobody back at command can tell him why. He starts to refuse to complete the mission until this is explained to him. I will not tell you more about this because it would spoil a major part of the movie.
There are times in the film where I started to feel nervous because of how well Sandler does his job of seeming extremely lonely and it is worse for him because there is nothing he can do to change that. The vessel he is solely in command of will take 200 days to get back to Earth even if he turned around right away. For most of us, this would be an absolute nightmare and I can't imagine the sort of person that could pull that off.
Sandler isn't lauded enough for his serious roles and I think this is because they don't make money because unfortunately the world's population seems to be an Idiocracy that genuinely enjoys stupid shite over a well done dramatic film. I don't think that this film ever was released in theaters and it may be part of Sandler's ongoing contract with Netflix and why almost everything he does seems to be only available on Netflix. All of his Netflix comedies have been absolutely terrible IMO but his serious ones that he has done have both been epic.
Critics didn't like this movie and I can't really understand why that is.
If you want to be completely surprised I wouldn't even watch this trailer if I was you
Should I watch it?
The critics for the most part didn't care for this film and if I was to take a guess as to why that is I would say that it is because the pacing of the film is actually very slow for the first half of the movie. Then the big twist, while it was something that I really enjoyed, it might have been considered quite stupid to people that are too committed to every single film needing to be a flawless original work of art. I can find no flaw in this movie because the CGI looks real, the acting is solid, and a lot of the story isn't really fully explained and when it is over there are a lot of unanswered questions that encourages thought in your life. I enjoy this in films and highly recommend that you watch this, especially if you are a science fiction fan.
Currently the only legal way of watching this film is to stream it on Netflix