Adam Sandler Does Serious Sci-Fi in the ‘Spaceman’ Trailer

I think we need a kitschy McConaissance-type term for what’s going on with Adam Sandler’s career over at Netflix. Sure, not everything he makes these days is great. But quietly, the guy has turned into a surprisingly good, surprisingly understated actor, and rather than churn out one carbon copy comedy after another he keeps trying to new roles, new genres, and making more and more dramas. Did you see his sports movie Hustle? It was good. How about You Are So Not Invited to My Bar Mitzvah, where he took a backseat to his own daughters? Funny!

His latest unexpected career twist: Spaceman, a serious sci-fi film about a lonely astronaut. This guy, he misses the Earth so much, he misses his wife (Carey Mulligan). But then he meets some kind of strange alien creature, voiced by Paul Dano. This is the opposite of what we’d come to expect from Sandler a few years ago. That’s why I’m interested.

Check out the trailer below:

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Here is the film’s official synopsis:

Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut, Jakub (Adam Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano) works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late.

Spaceman will premiere on Netflix on March 1. But what do we call the Sandler renaissance? Sandmania?The Sandlory Days? We have to figure this out before he wins an Oscar.