'Astronaut's Wife' fails to deliver on promise

"The Astronaut's Wife"

Directed by: Rand Ravich

Starring: Charlize Theron, Johnny Depp

Rated: R

Working out of Springfield, I have to tell you, I don't get invited to a whole lot of world premieres or critics' screenings of movies.

I do, however, take note of these things, and a rule of thumb is this: If a film company doesn't have previews for the press, they're probably sitting on a worrisome, let's call it bad, piece of celluloid. A film with the likes of Johnny Depp and the up-and-coming Charlize Theron should be making headlines weeks before its official release. This wasn't the case. No press screenings at all.

On the other hand, "The Astronaut's Wife" is distributed by New Line Cinema, and its track record is pretty decent.

I've been searching for a scary movie all season. "The Haunting," despite its lavish set design and high-dollar production values, wasn't it. And as far as I'm concerned, "The Blair Witch Project" shouldn't use the tag line of "scariest movie of the decade," but rather "most inventive marketing ploy since the days of William Castle."

I have to give the people behind that film credit for making a movie for less than $100,000, creating a mystique around it using the Internet and even the cable network Bravo to convince people it was real, but I don't think it was all that frightening.

What really frightens me is the thought of hack film students around the world being convinced that all they need is a novel publicity ploy and some nauseating camera work to sell their low-budget production.

During the first half hour of "The Astronaut's Wife," I thought we finally had the scary movie of the year. I forgave Johnny Depp's ridiculous Southern drawl and Charlize Theron's bad hairdo. I forgave the fact that even in the previews this looked to be a fairly obvious rip-off of "Rosemary's Baby."

The tension was building and I was ready.

Then everything fell apart.

At one point in the totally incomprehensible second act, I decided to go ask the manager if maybe the projectionist had left out a reel. Then I decided just to ask someone else in the crowd if they knew what was happening. Maybe I had blacked out or something. Instead, I just went with the flow, knowing that it would all come together eventually.

It didn't. It just got worse.

The basic story is great, and even simple to describe.

A couple of astronauts, one being Depp's character, Spencer Armacost, are up in space. They experience a two-minute period where they lose contact with NASA and come home slightly askew. One dies a bizarre death his wife later commits suicide but the other (Spencer) goes about his normal life.

Spencer and his wife, Jill, soon find out they're expecting and (this is somehow very important) they're having twins.

A former NASA employee, played by the excellent Joe Morton, shows up to tell Mrs. Armacost that something went on up in space when the astronauts had their two-minute blackout, and there's trouble afoot, especially if anyone involved is pregnant.

By now, the fact that Spencer is designing a two-seat airplane for an aerodynamics company and his boss' wife gives Jill a couple of pills to induce a miscarriage are merely two pieces of a puzzle that never fits together.

My apologies to anyone with the name, but the fact that Depp's character is called Spencer Armacost should have been a tip-off that the writing in "The Astronaut's Wife" might be too far out in space for the earthbound movie viewer to understand.

Writer and director Rand Ravich is a newcomer to Hollywood but he must know somebody high up on the film food chain. Someone financed this film, and they were able to attract stars of Theron and Depp's caliber to play the lead roles.

I've always had a lot of respect for Johnny Depp and the choices he's made as an actor. He was prime material for teen-idol status, but has always chosen interesting projects and pushed himself as an actor rather than as a movie star.

Considering this, I suspect that "The Astronaut's Wife" looked better on paper than it does on film.

Maybe Ravich had a film that made perfect sense but was six or seven hours long and the producers had him cut it down to two.

Whatever the case, something here just doesn't work. But I have to urge everyone to go see it.

Then explain it to me.

(Jim Wunderle works at Associated Video Producers and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.)