Spaceman gave Adam Sandler a new skill: ‘I never cried in front of a tennis ball before’
After Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, after Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected), after Jason Reitman’s Men, Women & Children and the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, film fans must be used to the idea of Adam Sandler as a comedian willing to step into dramatic roles. But they still haven’t seen him give a performance like the one he delivers in Netflix’s new science fiction movie Spaceman. His character, Czech astronaut Jakub Procházka, is painfully introverted, emotionally repressed, and above all, quiet. Sandler’s dramatic roles have mostly been about energy — sometimes restless, barely contained, often aggressive energy. Jakub is so muted and compressed, he seems like a trauma victim.