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Film: The Astronaut’s Wife
Year: 1999
Director: Rand Ravich
Writer: Rand Ravich
Starring: Charlize Theron, Johnny Depp and Joe Morton
Review:
In this film we have a couple, one is an astronaut, played by Johnny Depp, and the other is his wife, a school teacher who is played by Charlize Theron. At the beginning of the film we learn Depp is going up into space and Theron, though proud of him is scared as any family member would be.
Depp and another astronaut make up the two man crew. While Theron is making dinner one day, a news report catches her eye about how the crew has lost radio contact and then NASA contacts them. Theron and the other man’s wife are taken to a room where they will be debriefed. What we learn is that for 2 minutes, they lost contact and there was an explosion.
They return safe on Earth and go back to living their lives, while being checked out to make sure there was no adverse effects.
From here we learn that both men have changed. The other astronaut and his wife begin to fight quite a bit. Depp decides he no longer wants to be a pilot, which was his dream from the beginning. He now wants to move to New York City to be an executive for an aeronautics company. We learn that this city was one he used to hate and this position is something he knows nothing about.
Everyone around her has been trying to tell her that Depp is different, but it is around here that Theron begins to notice other things are different. She becomes pregnant with twins after a sex scene in the film that is somewhat surreal.
For the two leads in the film, neither turns in an overly impressive acting job. Depp is never given much of a personality before he goes up. We are told that he has a great personality and we vaguely see him as an exuberate pilot and then he morphs into an emotionless man, with glimpses of his old personality.
As for Theron, she seems prone to hysterics even before he’s gone up and we learn she has had mental problems from the beginning. This film steadily becomes a ‘crazy woman knows something is wrong, but she has to prove it while being crazy’ film.
With that said, the story isn’t horrible, the concept is pretty good. The ending is your typical sci-fi/horror ending, but that isn’t all that bad, so if you want to see a decent film in this genre, I would recommend it. There are definitely better ones out there. I would not recommend this film though if you’re a big fan of either lead, not either’s best work.
My Rating: 5 out of 10