The Astronaut's Wife

Going against my previous thinking that this 1999 Johnny Depp/Charlize Theron movie wasn’t worth watching, I gave it a spin yesterday. Sadly, I should have stuck with my original thought because writer/director Rand Ravich clearly did a better job pitching this scifi-ish thriller to the studio suits than he did in getting the film in the can.

The Astronaut’s Wife of the title is Jillian Armacost (Theron). Astronaut hubby Spencer (Depp) and mission commander Alex Streck go EVA to repair a satellite during an otherwise routine shuttle mission when something strange happens. The two exchange unexpected shouts and then lose communication with their shuttle. The other crewmembers take two minutes to get to them, apparently (this was never clear to me) Armacost and Streck are unconscious, and then make an emergency return to Earth.

While there’s no apparent medical reason, the commander dies soon after and at the wake his widow commits suicide. Spencer gets out of the hospital fine and rides his new fame to a high level executive slot at a big New York City aerospace company. Jillian, a second grade teacher, reluctantly agrees to the move.

Sherman Reese (Joe Morton) suspected that two minute gap was more than a bit strange, especially when neither Streck nor Armacost can or will explain their recorded dialog or the blank time. He has an explanation, though everyone at NASA thinks Reese’s gone off his nut, and comes to Manhattan to warn Jillian and maybe get his help. Instead he winds up dead and the key to his storage locker ends up in her hands.

The explanation that no one will buy? That, physical interstellar travel being immensely unlikely, an alien transmitted its essence (mind, soul, the movie’s never clear) to Earth and took over the two spacemen’s minds, without erasing what was there before. As a lifelong science fiction reader I’ve made some leaps before to accept a story’s premise but this is just so poorly done that I couldn’t get over it.

And Depp is so blond! Maybe if he had dark hair I would have liked this. But I doubt it, a lot.

not recommended