Hate Watching with Dan and Tony
An astronaut floating alone six months into a year-long mission. A mysterious alien spider that appears out of nowhere. A marriage crumbling across the vast emptiness of space. Netflix's "Spaceman" promised profound cosmic revelations but delivered a beautiful yet frustratingly hollow meditation on human connection.
Adam Sandler stars as Jakob, a Czech astronaut studying a mysterious cloud near Jupiter while his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) contemplates leaving him back on Earth. When a giant talking spider named Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) materializes on his spacecraft, Jakob embarks on a psychological journey through memories and regrets rather than the stars. The film tantalizes with visual splendor – the zero-gravity sequences alone showcase remarkable technical achievement – but ultimately fails to answer its own existential questions.
What makes "Spaceman" so frustrating is how close it comes to profundity. Adapted from Jaroslav Kalfař's novel "Spaceman of Bohemia," the film strips away crucial context that would have heightened the stakes. In the book, Jakob's mission is explicitly suicidal, a redemptive sacrifice to restore his family's honor after his father's disgrace as a government informant. Without this framework, Jakob's journey feels aimless, his relationship problems trivial compared to the cosmic scale of his surroundings.
The film's greatest strength lies in its willingness to embrace ambiguity – is the spider real or a manifestation of Jakob's lonely mind? Does the mysterious cloud contain universal wisdom or merely reflect our own projections? Yet this same ambiguity becomes its downfall when extended to character motivations and narrative purpose. By the time Jakob reaches his emotional epiphany, we've spent too little time understanding who he was before to appreciate who he's become.
Have you ever felt disconnected from someone you love despite being physically close? How would that feeling magnify across millions of miles of empty space? Watch "Spaceman" for its visual poetry and committed performances, but prepare for an emotional journey that, like its protagonist, never quite reaches its destination.
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