Following the recent release of Happy Gilmore 2, I thought I would reflect on another Adam Sandler Netflix effort – Spaceman – as part of my giant spider series. Our original review of the movie is here.
When I first started my giant spider odyssey, I lamented the fact that that giant spiders were never the good guys. I spotted a niche in the market and announced loudly, to myself, that I would write a full-length movie screenplay with a giant spider protagonist.
Here’s my pitch: an alien giant spider crashes to earth in a meteor. It escapes from the wreckage but one of its legs is broken. A nerdy young boy witnesses the crash through his telescope and goes to investigate.
The boy finds the spider and gains its trust by fixing its leg and offering it a McDonalds hamburger (or whatever fast-food chain we can secure sponsorship from). He names it Arthur, as in ‘arthropod.’
Later on, they team up and enter a soapbox race to win the fifty thousand dollars they need to save a youth community centre from a greedy property developer, cheered on by a group of loveable misfits.
I’ve fleshed out a few ideas in my head, but I haven’t written it yet. I’ve been writing these reviews, you see. And I’m not the fastest writer in the world. And they keep making more giant spider movies.
I’ll get to that screenplay eventually, but it’ll probably take five years. I wish that was a joke. I’m middle aged and I’m still acting like I’m going to live forever, even though I’m painfully aware that I’m not.
The mid-life crisis has arrived, you see. I wish that was a joke too. On the plus side, maybe it’ll light a fire under me and I’ll crack that screenplay in a mere four years. Fingers crossed.
Nature Abhors A Vacuum
It seems to me that life is like a very busy supermarket in the run-up to Christmas. You do your best to wheel your trolley through the chaos, but wherever you turn, someone appears, filling that small gap you just saw. You’ve got to be bold and claim that space first or you’ll never get your shopping done.
What I’m saying is this: if you find a niche, act on it. Now. Like… right now. If you don’t, someone else will fill the void. It’s inevitable. That’s what humanity does so well. Or, as Aristotle put it: ‘nature abhors a vacuum.’
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that while I’ve been plugging away on my giant spider movie reviews, somebody else has written, shot and released a giant spider movie where the spider is the good guy.
I’m not bitter. I’m glad it exists because it allows me to explore our eight-legged friends from a new angle. But I missed my window. Story of my life.
Adam Sandler Is An Astronaut
Spaceman is based on the novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar. It doesn’t feature soapbox racing, so I guess that’s something.
Spaceman stars Adam Sandler as astronaut Jakub, who is on a year-long solo space voyage to Jupiter to investigate the sudden appearance of a purple space cloud/nebula thing in the night sky. Halfway through the trip, a giant spider appears in his toilet and offers him relationship advice. No, really.
The least believable part of that last paragraph is Adam Sandler being an astronaut. He is miscast, no doubt about it, but he also gives a brilliant performance. I don’t know how to reconcile that. Both of those statements shouldn’t be true at the same time, but they are.
That’s my problem, I guess. I’ve got thirty years of Sandler baggage weighing me down. A not-so-small part of me was counting the minutes until Billy Madison’s imaginary penguin showed up.
It’s not a totally crazy idea – an imaginary pig appears at one point.
No, really.
Whether the spider is real is never definitively answered, so you can decide for yourself. It’s logical for it to be imaginary, but this is Sci-fi, and there is powerful evidence for it being real, which I will discuss as we go.
Czech It Out
The race to the Chopra cloud (presumably an Indian astronomer saw it first and got to name it) is led by a nation on the cutting edge of space travel: the Czech Republic! Or is it Czechia now? I think they rebranded, but it’s not catching on.
Czechia’s main rival in the race to the Chopra Cloud are those other titans of the cosmos: South Korea!
This odd choice of spacefaring nations represents a welcome break from America and Russia, at least. In the book, they explain it by stating that the other countries believe the expedition is too dangerous. This basically means the Czechs and Koreans spotted a niche and decided to fill it.
I hate being right all the time.
The Czech spaceship appears robust enough, but the tech has a retro Cold War feel with buttons, levers, switches, and flashing lights. It’s functional, but dated and unfashionable, like communism (except for the functional part).
The onboard cameras have mostly failed. The toilet makes loud noises when Jakub is trying to sleep. It’s all a bit shoddy.
You also have to question the wisdom of the Czechs in sending only one astronaut on the mission. I realise we wouldn’t have a movie if he wasn’t alone, but if you take these things at face value, it gives the impression that the mission has been launched on a wing and a prayer. It’s got the same vibe as strapping yourself to an Acme rocket and hitting the blast-off button.
Which is exactly what I would expect a Czech space program to look like. No offence.
Gentlemen, I Regret To Inform You That… Women
Jakub is 189 days into his trip and looks like absolute shit. Remember the scene in The Wedding Singer where he gets drunk and beaten up by the cheating douchebag fiancé of the girl he loves? He looks like that. For the entire movie. He isn’t sleeping, and the loneliness is taking its toll.
Despite this, Jakub is obliged to give interviews to be broadcast at home and answer stupid questions from the public, where they bum him out even more by asking if he’s lonely.
He communicates via an invention called a quantum phone, which allows instantaneous communication with Earth, regardless of how far away he is. It saves the awkward pauses at least. You might think this technology would help with his loneliness problem, but not when his wife won’t answer his calls.
Jakub’s wife, Lenka (the ever-excellent Carey Mulligan), is heavily pregnant and angry at Jakub for choosing the mission over her and the baby. She has a quantum phone booth in her house that looks like a classic sit-in arcade machine, but she won’t pick up when Jakub calls. Hopefully, she can still use it to destroy the Death Star.
Instead, she records a video telling him she’s leaving him. Er, what? You’re leaving HIM? He’s rounding JUPITER. I’m pretty sure he left you. Which… is kind of her point.
Anyway, she decides to move to a mansion in the countryside with other single mothers, which sounds cultish to me.
Whilst I sympathise with her situation, I still think sending a Dear Jakub video to a guy already struggling with his mental health half a solar system away is pretty darn cold.
It’s bad enough that he’s alone and his main point of contact at the space agency is Raj from The Big Bang Theory (no, really). You wouldn’t wish that on anybody.
Big Nope
Jakub’s handlers on earth withhold the video to protect his sanity, but I doubt it matters at this stage because he’s already dreaming about a spider crawling around under his skin, poking its leg out of his nose like the most embarrassing stray hair ever, and emerging from his mouth.
This is one of the biggest hints that the spider might be a product of his imagination, because it crawls from his head like his brain has given birth to it.
When the ‘actual’ spider arrives a few minutes later, there’s no explanation for how it managed to enter an airtight spaceship, which further suggests it isn’t real.
Jakub takes one look at his new shipmate, and until that moment, I didn’t realise there was a facial expression for ‘nope,’ but Adam Sandler nails it.
Jakub shuts himself in an airlock, dons a space suit, and releases a decontaminant gas that flushes out the whole ship. But never fear – the spider is fine. His only reaction is to sneeze over the visor of Jakub’s helmet. The spider snot remains on the helmet for the rest of the movie, so chalk one up in the ‘could be real’ column.
Cuddly But Horrifying
The spider speaks to Jakub telepathically in Paul Dano’s soft voice. He seems quite nice, especially as Jakub just tried to murder him. He’s an explorer who fled his planet (like Jakub) after it was overrun by parasitic creatures called Gorompeds (not like Jakob). It’s quite a specific tale that I doubt would originate from a figment of someone’s imagination.
The spider has been trying to find out the secrets of the universe, but has recently concerned himself with figuring out humans instead. It isn’t long before THAT rabbit hole leaves it feeling so depressed that it starts binge eating hazelnut chocolate spread.
No, really.
Physically, its body is the size of a large dog. It has eight legs but only six eyes. I guess I’ll allow it. It possesses nose slits and a mouth, and I’m sure I could see teeth as well, but not pointy, threatening teeth – human teeth.
Its fangs are bulky and blunt-looking (again, not threatening). It doesn’t have an exoskeleton but hairy skin – its skeleton is inside its body like a normal person.
The special effects are amazing. It’s the best-looking giant spider I’ve ever seen onscreen, and you will believe it is real. It’s still freaking ugly, but it should be. You don’t want it to be cute, you just want them to smooth over the rough edges enough to make him a sympathetic character.
Cuddly but horrifying, which is also how I would describe myself on a dating profile. It’s a tough balance to pull off, but they manage it.
Meet Hanus
Jakub names the spider Hanus (pronounced ‘Hanush’ in Adam Sandler’s occasional Eurotrash accent). Hanus was a real person, thought to have built the astronomical clock in Prague, which is the oldest working clock in the world, fact fans.
According to legend, councillors poked Hanus’ eyes out so he couldn’t make another clock. Hanus instructed his pupil to smash the clock in revenge, and nobody could repair it for 100 years. It later transpired that Hanus didn’t make the clock. He only added to it later and it’s not clear if the rest of the story is true at all.
So what does this all mean? If Hanus the clockmaker represents Hanus the spider, then the clock would represent…the universe, maybe? Jakub doubts whether Hanus the clockmaker existed, which means he’s questioning the spider’s existence but also holding out the possibility that it might be… God?
Hanus the spider is thought to be as old as the universe, so you never know. Or the writers just wanted to shoehorn in some Czech folklore and hoped we’d read too much into it and credit them for layers of meaning that aren’t there. Could be that.
Hanus names Jakub ‘Skinny. Human.’ That’s how he pronounces it, with a definite pause between the words. Jakub doesn’t react to it or question it once. It’s hard not to think of it as a sly sarcastic insult (Adam Sandler is hardly skinny), but Hanus isn’t that petty. It’s not in his character.
Perhaps Jakub is skinny in the book, and the name just carried over from that. If so, it’s not an insult but a literal depiction of what Hanus sees. This spider lacks imagination. I wonder if he loves lamp.
Give Me Some Space, Man
Hanus counsels Jakub by telepathically broadcasting Jakub’s worst memories into both of their brains. It’s like when your annoying friend keeps sending you TikToks you didn’t ask for.
These flashbacks take up too much of the movie and slow it down to a crawl. Many of them show Jakub breaking promises to Lenka and choosing his career over her, even after she miscarries their first baby.
Then we see that Jakub’s father was a communist interrogator who tortured people and was murdered when the commies were overthrown (so at least that story has a happy ending).
From this we can infer that Jakub chose his career over Lenka because he wanted to restore his family’s disgraced name. Apparently, that’s a bad thing.
The movie labours the point somewhat, and it’s depressing at times. Every now and then, the movie cuts to an exterior shot of the ship approaching the Chopra cloud but it never seems to get any closer.
Anybody got any Nutella?
Hanus finally experiences enough of Jakub’s greatest hits to lose all respect for him and leaves. I guess family honour means nothing in giant spider world.
Jakub realises he should have prioritised Lenka over his career and sends her a message to say sorry.
Purple Haze
Shortly after, Hanus returns, but he is sick. The Gorompeds have infected him somehow, and his time is short.
Jakub and Hanus share a heartfelt hug that isn’t creepy at all. Hugs are great. Imagine how much better it would be with eight arms wrapped around you.
I realise it would be more accurate to write ‘legs’ instead of ‘arms’ in that last sentence, but it made it sound weird.
Finally, we get to the cloud. The maggot-like Gorompeds begin to emerge from Hanus’ nose and he flees the ship. Jakub follows in his space suit with a canister of decontaminant. I thought he was going to use it as a propellant like Wall-E did with a fire extinguisher and blast himself off into space. But he just wants to douse Hanus and kill the Gorompeds.
It works. Unfortunately for Jakub, it also works as a propellent like in Wall-E and he blasts himself off into space.
Hanus takes Jakub by the hand and gives him the guided tour of the cloud. He explains that the cloud contains all the information (or vibrations) in the universe in one place, somehow.
Don’t question it, just feel. It’s the beginning and the end and other metaphysical mumbo jumbo.
It may have worked better without the heavy-handed exposition, but it’s still an effective scene with beautiful swirling purple clouds that reminded me of bath time at Prince’s house.
The music is haunting. I’m no expert, but I’m sure they played those musical chords that make you feel sad.
Nice Korea Move
They see a light that turns out to be the South Korean spaceship. I don’t want to think about the astronomical odds of the Koreans arriving at that exact time at that exact point in space. However, I can believe that, in more ways than one, Hanus guides Jakub to where he needs to be.
Before the Koreans arrive, more Gorompeds emerge and consume Hanus. Goodbye, old pal. I never thought the death of a giant spider could be so emotional.
As Jakub awaits rescue, he and Lenka experience a telepathic connection, enabled by the purple cloud.
Jakub then imagines himself in a river where he nearly drowned as a child. Lenka is sitting on a log dressed as Rusalka, a water nymph from the Czech opera of the same name. It’s the same costume she wears when they first meet in an earlier flashback.
If you don’t know the story of Rusalka, it’s the un-Disneyfied The Little Mermaid (unhappy ending – spoiler). A water nymph falls for a prince and asks to be made human so she can marry him, but it all goes wrong.
It’s another analogy to what’s going on in Jakub’s life using elements of Czech culture, except this one makes more sense than the Hanus thing. The story of Rusalka is a fair representation of Jakub and Lenka’s relationship up to that point because she sacrificed so much to be with him and regrets her decision.
But it also seems like they are on the road to reconciliation, so the comparison doesn’t quite work because in the Opera, the Prince dies after he kisses her (spoiler).
If they’d stuck with the ending of the book, the Rusalka analogy would work better. In the book, the returning spaceship crash-lands on earth. Jakub survives but pretends to be dead because Lenka is better off without him, so he goes off to live in a log cabin.
Also, he might be infected with Gorompeds, which means the whole human race is fucked. I’m glad we didn’t get that ending in Spaceman. Hanus’ efforts to educate Jakub, and by extension all of us, has to count for something, right?
Once Jakub boards the Korean ship, he phones Lenka and they officially reconcile. It’s more on-the-nose exposition that we didn’t need.
Overall
I’m not too sure how to sum Spaceman up. It tries your patience at times and is occasionally boring, bleak, and way too convinced of its own importance.
Spaceman also looks amazing, the cast is great, and it strives to say something profound about the human condition. It ends on a hopeful note and compels you to sympathise with a giant fucking spider. What more can I ask for?
Well, seeing as you asked – a little levity, maybe? They cast Adam Sandler, for God’s sake. Let him be Adam Sandler, if only for a little while.
I don’t know what it all adds up to. Spaceman may not be a top-tier movie, but it is a top-tier giant ass spider movie and I’m glad it exists.
P.S.: The director, Johan Renck, has unequivocally stated that Hanus is real, which is an unusual move after planting so many seeds of doubt. You can make up your own mind, of course, but I’m with him.
Rating: 6 spider legs out of 8
