Wendy Ide 

Spaceman review – Adam Sandler is adrift in outer space with a comfort spider

Sandler plays a solo astronaut confronting the cracks in his marriage with help from an eight-legged alien voiced by Paul Dano in this disappointingly drab sci-fi drama
  
  

Adam Sandler as Jakub in Spaceman.
Adam Sandler as Jakub in Spaceman. Photograph: Netflix

An astronaut who is just over six months into a solo mission to investigate a mysterious galactic phenomenon, Jakub (a tortured, reined-in performance from Adam Sandler) is ill-placed to deal with the breakdown of his marriage to his pregnant wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), left behind on Earth. Fortunately, an alien spider with the voice of Paul Dano and all the wisdom of the universe has stowed away on the vessel and offers Jakub ad hoc therapy sessions.

Jakub and his (possibly imaginary) emotional support arachnid drift aimlessly towards some kind of nebulous insight, accompanied by a score that sounds like the kind of formless ambient wafting that gets piped into a floatation tank. Spaceman is a fascinatingly odd premise let down by its drab, dispiritingly inert execution.

Watch a trailer for Spaceman.
 

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