Last Saturday, we talked about Jakub’s new buddy, a giant spider that may or may not be real.

This potential hallucination wants to help the astronaut with his loneliness after his wife, Lenka, leaves him. The trouble is, the spider’s idea of helping poor Jakub is forcing him to remember his past. The writer presumably wanted to give Jakub a “redemption arc” using these flashbacks. However, the astronaut’s memories are shown in a disjointed order, confusing the story and making Lenka look very bad. That makes her relationship with Jakub difficult to root for. The chaotic flashbacks, mixed with a variety of plot holes, make for a very irritating story.

One of the most glaring plot holes arises when Jakub is about to reach the mysterious anomaly known as the Chopra Cloud. He’s been traveling through space for months, hoping to reach this cloud so he can place a sensor inside it and send the data back to Czechoslovakia’s mission control. As he’s nearing the cloud, one of its purple particles floats into his ship. Jakub tries to catch it, but the spider informs him that he can’t. It turns out the creature is right. No matter what container Jakub uses, the particle always escapes.

The movie tries to keep the question of whether or not the spider is real open-ended. This is a mistake because the attempt to keep things mysterious only succeeds in creating a variety of plot holes, no matter which scenario is true. If the spider is real, why don’t the ship’s cameras pick it up? If the spider isn’t real, then how does it know about the nature of the Chopra Cloud’s particles when Jakub doesn’t? We never find out the answers to any of these questions.

Regardless, the important thing is that during this portion of the story, when the purple particle enters the ship, Jakub believes the spider exists. So, when it tells him that the particle cannot be contained, the first thing that should come to his mind is the state of his mission. Can Earth’s sensors detect the cloud at all? If it can’t, then his mission is a bust. He may as well go home.

But this issue is never addressed. It’s flat-out ignored. So, when Jakub and the spider reach the cloud and the ship starts to malfunction, I didn’t feel sorry for the astronaut; I thought he was an idiot.

He should’ve asked about this problem the second he couldn’t catch the particle! And the thing is, Jakub would have asked! He’s sacrificed his marriage for this mission. It’s his entire life. The whole point behind the spider’s exploration of Jakub and Lenka’s relationship is that the astronaut is supposed to conclude that he shouldn’t have left her.

I’ll discuss this ridiculous conclusion in a moment but, even if the spider was right, Jakub would’ve asked if he should continue. Maybe he would’ve pressed on despite the doomed nature of his quest. But there’s no way the question of success or failure wouldn’t have entered his mind. Such a large plot hole is enough to pull a viewer out of the movie altogether. The suspension of disbelief, essential for science fiction, is shot.

At any rate, when Jakub first enters the cloud, his computers start glitching, and mission control begins struggling to communicate with him. However, he hardly notices because maggot-like parasites start crawling out of the spider’s body. Earlier in the film, the spider mentions that a race of parasitic aliens had destroyed everyone on his planet and that he was infected with them, so it looks like his time has come. The spider leaves—presumably to die—and then the astronaut does something profoundly stupid.

He grabs a container of decontaminant called Bomba and leaves the ship to save the spider. This is ridiculous because he’d already made mission control use the Bomba to try and kill the spider near the beginning of the movie but it didn’t work. So what makes him think that it’s going to kill the maggots crawling out of the wretched beast when they were already inside the creature’s body the first time the decontaminant was used?

Second, what about Lenka?! This entire blasted movie is about him being an idiot because he abandoned his wife for a mission. Never mind the fact that his mission could save Earth; Jakub is a jerk for not having his priorities straight or something. Now, he’s risking death—potentially abandoning his wife all over again—for a spider that is going to die and is leaving the ship so Jakub can escape the cloud before his equipment fails altogether. And for the record, by inferring the spider’s motives, I’m helping the writer write the script because absolutely nothing is explained during this entire scene.

Anyway, Jakub attaches a harness to his ship when he enters the void of space to save the spider. But of course, it breaks, and he’s left spinning around inside the cloud. Fortunately, he bumps into his favorite arachnid, and then something equally stupid happens. The spider, who is moments away from death, decides to take Jakub further into the cloud so they can see the remnants of the beginning of the universe. This thing could fly through space the entire time.

I have an idea. Take him back to his ship so he can go home! Even if Jakub fails to save the ship, it’s not going to blow up. He could float further into the cloud after the ship shuts down. The cloud has been pulling it in anyway.

Recall that the eight-legged philosopher has been lecturing Jakub about what a jerk he is for leaving his wife throughout the movie. But now, when Jakub has every reason to hightail it back to Earth, he suddenly wants to help the astronaut with his “discovery.” Jakub complies because he has no choice, and the two journey further into the cloud. The scene is basically an acid trip with ethereal music. In the middle of this trip, the spider starts spewing lame rhetoric. The statement that annoyed me the most was, “The universe as it should be,” which made me wonder why Jakub should bother saving his marriage at all if the universe is already perfect.

Once the spider is done jabbering nonsense, Jakub tops off the stupidity by pulling out some off-brand chocolate hazelnut spread, “for soothing.” How did Jakub have time to grab the spread when he was rushing around to save the spider? And wouldn’t the fact that he grabbed the spread imply he knew the spider was going to die no matter what he did? In which case, why risk death if he knew the creature was already doomed and was essentially leaving him so he could return to his wife? Again, I assume that was what the spider was doing since the writer tells us nothing.

The spider takes a bite of the spread, and the maggots finish him off. Jakub is very upset by the loss of his arachnid pal and believes he’s going to die. But just when all hope is lost, the South Koreans come out of nowhere and pull Jakub to safety. Infuriatingly lucky.

The movie ends with Jakub calling his wife, and the two essentially kiss and make up over the phone…

Before concluding the review, I want to talk about the true problem with this movie. It’s the idea that Jakub never should’ve left his wife for the mission. I understand that such a separation would be very hard. But people leave their spouses for missions and causes all the time. Spouses are willing to endure such suffering because they’re thinking about the future. The cloud could’ve killed everyone, and someone needed to go up there and see if they could find some answers. It was a good cause.

Sometimes spouses do end a marriage over long-distance circumstances. So the issue isn’t that Lenka left. Nor need Jakub be seen as something of a villain for pushing her away. The issue is that the movie wants to paint Jakub’s mission as the main story problem by calling into question the choice to leave anyone for any cause. It didn’t say that the mission was a pretense. Honestly, that would’ve worked better because the dire stakes were a perfect excuse for Jakub to hide behind. Instead, the film pointed to Jakub’s past, said he was running from his wife because of it, and maintained that the mission was purely motivated by his ego. The movie seemed to be pointing the finger at people who leave their families for whatever reason and saying, “How dare you abandon those closest to you!”

I don’t know if the movie was meant to say this, but I certainly got that impression because of the deliberate effort to downplay the significance of the cloud. But really, the story talked out of both sides of its mouth so to speak. For the majority of the film, the writer wanted us to understand that the mission was driven by vanity, but at the same time, the spider thinks this cloud represents some grand truth. At the end, it starts spouting freshmen philosophy. It’s entirely possible that the writer didn’t know what the movie was trying to say at all.

It would take twelve reviews to cover all the plot holes and problems with this film, but for some reason, I didn’t find it entirely unenjoyable. The pacing is good, even if the stakes are unclear. Adam Sandler’s performance is shaky, but there are moments where he really does an excellent job.

Don’t misunderstand. This movie is trash, but I think one of the reasons I despised it so much was that I could see the story the writer was trying to tell; however, the mixed messages and the lack of attention to detail derailed it. Yet, there has to be a gem inside this film somewhere because, despite all the problems, I still found myself rooting for Jakub and Lenka. It was hard at times, but in the end, I wanted them to restore their relationship. So, if you have a couple hours, give Spaceman a try. You just might find that gem.

Spaceman 1: World is ending. Worse, an astronaut’s wife wants out. It’s not clear just what role the threatening Chopra Cloud plays and that complexity dogs the story. Things come to a head when the astronaut’s toilet breaks and when he goes to fix it, he finds a giant spider in his bathroom.

Spaceman 2: Along came a spider and sat down… Well, maybe. The spider is an alien with a somewhat complex relationship to people and toilets. Adam Sandler gives a marvelous performance at a key point, but the script doesn’t give a specific moment that tells the audience what changed his mind.