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One of the cultural ripples of the 90s is that, with “X-Files” airing every Sunday night, and all over the time/place in syndication, movies have to try harder to generate a worthwhile boo. The Sixth Sense succeeded, as did Blair Witch. But you have to wonder what prompted everyone involved with The Astronaut’s Wife, especially its stars, to think it was worth their time. I mean, Johnny Depp is one of the closest things we’ve got these days to a genuine all-around talent among younger leading men (Edward Norton being the only other that jumps to mind), and elegantly zoftig Charlize Theron is practically Marilyn Monroe without the designated parking space at a psychiatric hospital, so why did they do a movie based on a pedestrian script that looks like something Chris Carter let his nanny’s stepson write while he took a ski break in Aspen?
Depp plays Spencer Armacost, a shuttle astronaut who comes back from a botched mission with a decidedly suspect twinkle in his eye. Theron plays his wife Jillian, who worries something’s wrong when he becomes bored with flying but fascinated by clock radios and rough sex. Things get really hairy after they move to New York and a conspiratorial ex-NASA employee (Joe Morton) tracks her down with a warning that the unborn twins she’s recently sprouted might not be human (he’s right; they turn out to be the tow-headed pair that doubled up to play Adam Sandler’s social experiment in Big Daddy).
Maybe it’s because this horn-E.T. Mars Needs Women routine worked better when accented by Cold War paranoia, as in one of the best movies with one of the most lurid titles ever, 1958’s I Married a Monster from Outer Space (starring then-heartthrob and future novelist Tom Tryon), or the extreme SFX and ultra-kinky alien sex practices in Species. Or maybe it’s because, in a day when more people fantasize about being a NASCAR driver, or even a Subaru-commercial driver, than a pilot or astronaut, 20 years since Tom Wolfe reinvigorated the mythos, the whole space cowboy thing has lost its mystique. Whatever, thanks to writer and first-time director Rand Ravich (that would make a fairly cool name for a wrestler or chopsocky film hero, though, dontcha think?), whose previous best-known credit is the screenplay for Candyman II, The Astronaut’s Wife is mostly a pretty but not so spooky exercise in overly trendy camera play and characters with ill-advised and -practiced accents -- overused drawls emit from Depp and supporting star Blair Brown, and freaky Teutonic from former sex symbol Samantha Eggar as Jillian’s doctor -- sparked only by the occasional flash of directorial inspiration.
Maybe if they’d called it I Married a Monster from “21 Jump Street”... C-
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