Adam Sandler will return to Netflix this week with a movie unlike anything he’s done before – and it’s already off to a surprising start with critics.
Sandler’s lucrative success with Netflix dates back to the mid-2010s with The Ridiculous 6, a movie with a rare 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes score that became an unlikely launchpad for a long line of critically dismissed, widely-watched comedies.
Whether it was The Do-Over, Sandy Wexler, The Week Of, or Murder Mystery (the latter of which broke Netflix records upon its premiere in 2019), he was an unstoppable force on the streamer. After the acclaim of Uncut Gems – god, he should have won the Oscar, right? – he signed a fresh deal with Netflix that kicked off with… Hubie Halloween.
He’s been open about the fact he doesn’t care about reviews – but his next movie could join the upper echelon of his filmography in terms of critical reception.
Adam Sandler’s Spaceman debuts to solid Rotten Tomatoes score
Spaceman, a new sci-fi drama on Netflix starring Adam Sandler as a lone cosmonaut, has come in at 69% on Rotten Tomatoes from its first wave of reviews.
So far, that means it’s only beaten by a few films: You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah (91%), The Meyerowitz Stories (92%), Hustle (93%), Uncut Gems (91%), Punch-Drunk Love (79%), and The Wedding Singer (72%). It’s currently tied with 2009’s Funny People.
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In our four-star review, we said it was like “if Solaris and E.T. had an eight-legged baby… Spaceman doesn’t chart new ground in sci-fi. But its message is quietly wondrous: for all that we don’t know about the universe, love is the one faith (and dream) we can all experience.”
It’s received plenty of other positive reviews, with TheWrap writing: “Smart, entrancing, and filed firmly under interesting, Spaceman is a conversation-starting meditation on the human condition made as a piece of art for audiences to experience rather than being a film made with an audience in mind.”
“Come for the wise alien spider, stay for Adam Sandler at his somber best in this strange, heartfelt sci-fi drama. Here’s hoping he continues to push himself to new highs,” Empire also wrote.
IndieWire took a dimmer view, writing: “Seeing Sandler whirl gravity-free throughout the space shuttle isn’t without its pleasures… [but] Renck’s film leaves him quite literally lost in space with nowhere to go, and rather than leave us with new perspectives on space travel or marital discord or an awe-eyed curiosity about either, we leave with a shrug.”
