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The Astronaut's Wife

Play trailer Poster for The Astronaut's Wife R Released Aug 27, 1999 1h 49m Sci-Fi Drama Mystery & Thriller Play Trailer Watchlist
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15% Tomatometer 60 Reviews 33% Popcornmeter 50,000+ Ratings
When astronaut Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) returns to Earth after a mission that nearly cost him his life, he decides to take a desk job in order to see his beautiful wife, Jillian (Charlize Theron), more often. Gradually, Jillian notices that Spencer's personality seems to have changed, but her concerns fade when she discovers that she's pregnant. As Jillian grows closer to becoming a mother, her suspicions about Spencer return. Why does it seem as if he's a different person?
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The Astronaut's Wife

The Astronaut's Wife

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Critics Consensus

Despite the best efforts of its talented leads, The Astronaut's Wife moves at a snail's pace and fails to generate enough intrigue to keep viewers engaged.

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Critics Reviews

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Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Rated: C+ Sep 7, 2011 Full Review Globe and Mail Rated: 2.5/4 Mar 22, 2002 Full Review Janet Maslin New York Times The Astronaut's Wife is ridiculously derivative. Rated: 2.5/5 Jan 1, 2000 Full Review Chuck Klosterman Akron Beacon Journal A strikingly unremarkable picture that starts with an unoriginal idea and ends with a cheap conclusion designed to prompt a sequel (although it's unlikely this movie will be successful enough to warrant one). Rated: 2/4 Oct 26, 2023 Full Review Mary K Feeney Hartford Courant "The Astronaut's Wife,'' heavy on melodrama and skimpy on substance, is light years too long to engage audiences. And Depp, a talented actor with some great films to his credit, seems lost in space in this unfortunate vehicle. Jan 2, 2018 Full Review Rob Gonsalves Rob's Movie Vault A high-toned grind. Rated: F Jul 23, 2007 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Sean M This movie was sooo bad. A stinker for sure. Rated 1 out of 5 stars 04/10/23 Full Review Butch B great actors on a poor script. Started slow and stayed that way. A log of terrible dialogue. Ended up watching about half of the movie and then jumping to the end. Glad I didn't pay to go see this movie. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 03/09/23 Full Review Audience Member Despite the strong performances from Depp and Theron, this movie wields a pretty predictable plot. Like the sort of thing you can guess immediately, say ten minutes or so into the movie. Aswell as that, the dialogue is at points on the forced/cringy side and certain aspects of the story just don't make logical sense (or you make your own logic to make it make sense... either way it's bad) But with the decent acting (mostly) and the few scenes of shock or build up that actually work I deem this film 'watchable'... It'll probably just be easier if you've had one of those days at work where you're brain has turned to complete mush. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/15/23 Full Review adam b I enjoyed the premise for the most part (a 4th dimensional being(?) taking over the body of an astronaut and then using the wife as a way to reproduce) but this film explored really nothing about the whole "the twins will be pilots" even though they are mentioned a ton and is basically the entire agenda for the alien. I mean, pilots for what exactly? Why did you need kids as pilots? And the film didn't explore the alien aspect very much, mostly just examines the wife losing her mind figuring out her "husband" isn't actually her husband anymore. Plus, some of this dialogue is so bad and some characters are literally so annoying. Other than that, I was entertained and enjoyed Depp's and Theron's performance a bunch Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review felipe d It was a really, really, really slow movie. I got myself sleeping sometimes. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) is an astronaut working for NASA, and his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron) is a second-grade elementary school teacher. While he and Alex Streck (Nick Cassavetes) are walking in space on a mission there is an explosion that knocks out their communication with the command center. They land but when their spouses arrive to see them they are in the hospital; both asleep until they recover. Armacost eventually wakes up without problems, but Streck has a medical emergency requiring him to have an electrical cardioversion. Neither speak about the in-flight emergency. Armacost accepts a position with a New York-based company, McClaren. At a farewell party, Streck's aggressive behavior catches Jillian's attention before he suddenly dies from what NASA attributes to a stroke. At the Streck house Natalie Streck (Donna Murphy) electrocutes herself in the bath with a radio. In New York at a party, Jillian asks Spencer to tell her about the space walk incident. He answers while he starts to make love to her. At home he makes aggressive love to her. She finds out she is pregnant, and at an ultrasound discovers she is having twins. She tells the doctor that earlier in her life, after her parents died, she sought psychiatric care because she started to see her loved ones dead, including herself. Sherman Reese (Joe Morton) has been terminated from NASA because he continued to insist that something was wrong with Spencer, though all tests came back normal. Reese confronts Jillian to warn her, and she leaves in fear, wanting to believe he is crazy but knowing he is right about Spencer being different. Jillian calls Reese and he tells her that Natalie was pregnant with twins at the time of her suicide. Jillian asks what the autopsy showed about the twins and Reese tells Jillian that he needs to meet her in person to show her. Spencer intercepts him, and he goes missing. As a backup plan, he has sent her a key to a self storage locker that has a VHS video cassette that explains that there was a signal in space near Spencer and Streck when they lost contact with NASA. He believes the signal was an alien that wanted to get to Earth and traveled as a sound wave through space, taking over Spencer's body... Rotten Tomatoes consensus reads: "Despite the best efforts of its talented leads, The Astronaut's Wife moves at a snail's pace and fails to generate enough intrigue to keep viewers engaged." Joe Leydon of Variety wrote, "Rosemary's Baby gets an extraterrestrial twist in The Astronaut's Wife, an aggressively stylish but dramatically flaccid drama that plays like an upscale reprise of a '50s sci-fi potboiler," while Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly rated it C+ and wrote, "The movie is far from incompetent; it simply has too few surprises to justify its indulgent atmosphere of malignant revelation." Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the direction is better than she expected but the writing is "ridiculously derivative," while Mick LaSalle of The San Francisco Chronicle stated, "The movie might not be perfect, but it deserved better than to be dumped into theaters. I rather enjoyed it." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times described it as "a moderately diverting thriller that builds suspense and entertains effectively". "The Astronaut´s Wife" is a truly wishy washy sci-fi thriller with not much of thrilling or exciting moments. Nothing really works in this film to my opinion. Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron hardly comes up to their standard, which makes you wonder if the director was actually on the set. The film was a box office bomb, no surprise there. Leave this one alone. No need to see. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/21/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Astronaut's Wife

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Cast & Crew

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Movie Info

Synopsis When astronaut Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) returns to Earth after a mission that nearly cost him his life, he decides to take a desk job in order to see his beautiful wife, Jillian (Charlize Theron), more often. Gradually, Jillian notices that Spencer's personality seems to have changed, but her concerns fade when she discovers that she's pregnant. As Jillian grows closer to becoming a mother, her suspicions about Spencer return. Why does it seem as if he's a different person?
Director
Rand Ravich
Producer
Andrew Lazar
Screenwriter
Rand Ravich
Distributor
New Line Home Video [us], New Line Cinema
Production Co
New Line Cinema, Mad Chance
Rating
R
Genre
Sci-Fi, Drama, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Aug 27, 1999, Original
Release Date (Streaming)
Mar 1, 2011
Box Office (Gross USA)
$10.7M
Runtime
1h 49m
Sound Mix
Surround
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