NOTFlix It: The Astronaut's Wife DVD, Movie Review (2009)

Editor's Note: NOTFlix It is a feature meant to draw attention to older films some readers might have missed, and might consider adding to their Netflix queue, or renting at their local DVD store. Unlike our Netflix It feature, NOTFlix It is designed to keep viewers far away from all the dogs that are out there. The following review of "The Astronaut's Wife," never published here before, is the original 1999 review. And you definitely should NOTFlix It.


Rand Ravich’s “The Astronaut’s Wife” is one small step in Ravich’s career, and one giant leap backward for the psychological drama. It dares to go where few films have gone before--absolutely nowhere.

The film stars Johnny Depp as Spencer Armacost, a NASA astronaut who loses two minutes of consciousness while on a mission in space. It’s what happened to Spencer--and to his dumb astronaut buddy, Alex (Nick Cassavetes)--that’s supposedly at the core of this film.

But the film’s script is full of black holes. Since the story is first about the great love supposedly shared between Spencer and his wife, Jillian (Charlize Theron), it’s absolutely essential that we believe in their love. Only then will we care when it’s threatened by extraterrestrial events.

But there’s no chemistry between the actors, no life in their bones. Ravich saturates his film in such cold, steely blues, Depp and Theron become two blocks of ice sliding about onscreen. For instance, each time they hit the sack, which is often, one half-expects some cash to be left on a bedside table.

Worse is Depp’s performance. Why Ravich insisted on having the actor speak in a slow, dim-witted Southern drawl is beyond comprehension--throughout, he sounds less like a bright, wealthy astronaut responsible for billions of dollars in technology than a man selling sides of pork out of a backwoods trailer.

Theron holds up better, but that’s only because she delivered the exact same performance in 1997’s “The Devil’s Advocate.”

Unlike, say, M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense,” “Wife” isn’t a sustained piece of work. It’s learned nothing from the canon, certainly nothing from the genre itself, because it exists in a sort of vacuum. Sure, the sets are terrific, but it’s cheaper and more satisfying to purchase an issue of Metropolitan Home.

In the end, it comes down to the characters--it always does--and Ravich’s characters are dead on the screen, cadavers with moving mouths and watery eyes who have no connection to themselves, to the story or to the audience.

Let’s send them--and this rotten film--straight to the moon.

Grade: D-