Matthew Turner | On 01, Mar 2024

Director: Johan Renck
Cast: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Isabella Rossellini, Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, Paul Dano
Certificate: 15

How can a movie that features a giant talking spider in space be so damn boring? That’s the prevailing question audiences are left with after this ponderous and unsatisfying spaceship-set sci-fi tale, which crash-lands on Netflix after receiving its world premiere at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival.

Directed by Johan Renck and adapted from Jaroslav Kalfar’s Czech source novel Spaceman of Bohemia, the film stars Sandler as astronaut Jakub, who’s six months into a solo space mission to investigate a mysterious purple nebula known as the Chopra Cloud. As he gets closer to his destination, Jakub is startled to realise that he’s sharing the spaceship with Hanus (voiced by Paul Dano), a giant talking spider, who seemingly just wants to keep him company. But is Hanus real or the product of space madness?

As if the giant talking spider wasn’t enough to deal with, Jakub is also preoccupied because he hasn’t heard from his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), in a while. That’s because she’s recently sent him a video break-up message, which space program boss Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellinii) decides not to share with Jakub for the sake of both the mission and his mental health.

The performances are something of a mixed bag. Sandler opts to make Jakub one of his rare serious dramatic performances, which is a shame, because a bit of Sandleresque levity could really have livened this up. In the event, his character is so perpetually downcast that he’s actually difficult to be around.

Paul Dano’s voice performance is the main reason to see the film, repeatedly referring to Jakub as “Skinny Human” and delivering all his lines in a measured monotone, like a space-arachnid version of HAL 9000 in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The effects work is decent too, from Hanus’ six eyes (two of them bigger than the other four) to the spidery movements, which are just slow enough as to not trigger anyone’s arachnophobia too badly.

As for Carey Mulligan, she’s stuck with the thankless role of unhappy wife and the script gives her very little of interest to do as a result. It doesn’t help that she has zero chemistry with Sandler in their flashback scenes (in stark contrast to her recent work in Maestro with Bradley Cooper), so it’s next to impossible to root for what’s supposed to be the all-important central relationship.

The script, adapted by Colby Day, is disappointingly dull throughout, consistently defaulting to familiar therapy-speak platitudes rather than anything interesting, imaginative or fun – even the purple cloud, the film’s nominal galactic mystery, turns out to be something derivative, familiar from countless other movies like Interstellar. The screenplay also arguably overplays the nods to the Czech origins of the source novel, although it does give birth to a potentially lethal drinking game in the process – try doing a shot every time someone mentions “Czech Connect” (the film’s videophone service) and see how far you get.

In fairness, the production design is impressive, especially on the smartly designed spaceship interiors. However, Renck’s direction keeps everything feeling frustatingly flat, failing to land the supposedly emotional moments and never approaching anything that might qualify as tension or drama. Stick this one in the airlock.

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