Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Six months into a solitary space mission, an astronaut starts to think that his marriage may be in trouble. Luckily for him there’s a mysterious creature from the beginning of time hiding away in his ship, and that creature turns out to be pretty good marriage counselor.
I know what you’re thinking: not THAT story again! It’s fair to say that Spaceman sounds like one of the stranger things we’ll be streaming in 2024. The trailer below for the new Netflix sci-fi drama doesn’t do much to dispel the mystery. So what can we expect from Adam Sandler’s space oddity?
Send your brain to another dimension
The film is based on the novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Czech author Jaroslav Kalfař, and if you want to avoid spoilers don’t go googling it. The astronaut in the book, Jakub, is an astrophysicist sent to explore a cloud of dust left behind by a comet, a cloud that’s turning the sky purple and that’s considered too dangerous to investigate. The Czech Republic decides that this is a great opportunity for some national pride and decides to send a mission to find out what’s going on; Jakub, somewhat reluctantly, is given the job. And then it gets weird.
The book was warmly received, with many reviewers suggesting that while the space stuff is accurate enough. “There are lovingly detailed passages on the mechanics of going to the toilet and cleaning your teeth in orbit, the dangers of muscle wastage and other minutiae of life in zero gravity” wrote Hari Kunzru – the real story here is “what it means to leave and whether it’s possible to come back”. Writing in The Guardian, Tibor Fischer adds: “It’s Solaris with laughs, history lessons and a pig killing.”
Spaceman stars Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Isabella Rossellini and the voice of Paul Dano, and it’s directed by Johan Renck of Chernobyl fame. It’ll stream on Netflix – the best streaming service – from March 1, 2024.
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