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Ridley Coote

Spaceman (2024) Dir: Johan Renck

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This Johan Renck directed Netflix original looked more intriguing to me than anything else. I enjoy a lot of what the science fiction genre has to offer, and this drama seemed to have a few fascinating little details to it. I didn't know what to expect beyond the film's premise.


The film was fairly trippy, in regards to its story, as well as some of the visuals, but it gave me the impression of doing too much, in that respect. It also played out at a pretty dreary pace, which sucked at my patience and failed to illicit much joy at all.


It was trying too hard to be philosophical and thought-provoking, and ultimately came across as pretentious and rather monotonous. The story wasn't without merit - I enjoyed the emotional strands running through it - but it was not executed well enough, for my taste.


The performance of Adam Sandler was okay, but failed to impress me to any significant degree. I'm not sure if he was trying to do an accent or not, I really hope he wasn't, because it was pretty terrible if he was. I digress, his performance did show a lot of the class that Sandler does in fact have, when he wishes to show it, but it was also fairly inconsistent.


I quite enjoy Carey Mulligan as an actress usually, but, although she still gave a fairly good performance, I found her a little disappointing - by her standards, in any case. She showed flashes of her wonderful acting, but much of her performance was unfortunately plain, much like the film as a whole.


Paul Dano provided a mildly interesting, but, much like the film in general, pretty monotonous voice performance. I didn't hate it, but it grew a little repetitive. I'll also very quickly mention Kunal Nayyar, Isabella Rossellini and Lena Olin, for their respective supporting roles.


Overall, I liked some of the ideas that this film had, but it failed to explore its many ideas with any true effectiveness or entertainment value. It had a lot of potential, but did not reach the heights it could have. That is not to say I did not find some enjoyment in it, but I wished there was more.



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