REVIEW: The Astronauts Wife (Blu-ray)

THE FILM:On the back of the new Blu-ray case for the Johnny Depp/Charlize Theron bomb THE ASTRONAUTS WIFE, Warner Brothers included a comment from the then PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER film critic Carrie Rickey who favorably compared the movie to the 1968 horror classic ROSEMARYS BABY. While I completely agree to the ROSEMARYS BABY comparison, I really cant do it favorably. Writer/director Rand Ravichs so far only feature film directing credit certainly wants to be a modern era science fiction ROSEMARYS BABY, but lacks everything that made Roman Polanskis horror masterpiece a success.

During a mission to repair an orbiting satellite, astronauts Spencer Armacost (Depp) and Alex Streck (Nick Cassavetes) experienced something that caused communication to be lost for two minutes. When they return to Earth they say an explosion caused the communication loss and refuse to discuss the incident with their wives. Shortly after, Streck dies during a party and his wife commits suicide. Spencers wife, Jillian (Theron) slowly begins to think something is not quite right with her husband after he leaves NASA for a high paying position with an aeronautics design company and moves the now expecting couple toNew York, a place he has never been fond of. Soon, the recently fired NASA representative Sherman Reese (Joe Morton) is trying to contact Jillian to share disturbing information about Spencers mission and Spencer begins acting more and more distant and sinister.

Yes, you know pretty much from the start where this movie is heading but it takes an extraordinarily boring route to get to there. Where Polanski firmly entrenched his audience into Rosemarys character and mindset and then planted ! solid se eds in both the character and the audience that something is definitely wrong, Ravich seems to be content just skimming the surface of characters and having them react strongly to things that dont really warrant it. Where ROSEMARYS BABY had no problem making sure we the audience knew something was up and not telling us exactly what it is, THE ASTRONAUTS WIFE spends almost all of its running time trying to convince Jillian and us that something is truly wrong. Ravich tries to build suspense from nothing; we have no reason to doubt anything that is going on even though we know something is solely because this is that type of movie. THE ASTRONAUTS WIFE was a major bomb at the box office and has rightly been dismissed and pretty much forgotten ever since. This Blu-ray release isnt going to change that.

THE DISC:The anamorphic 1.85 transfer is quite good giving decent and accurate colors and a fair amount of detail. Blacks are true and shadow detail is very good.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is likewise very clean with good depth and ambience. The movie may be lacking but the Blu-ray presentation is not.

THE EXTRAS:Nothing.

MY SAY:ROSEMARYS BABY: guaranteed to scare and keep you up at night.THE ASTRONAUTS WIFE: guaranteed to bore and put you to sleep.

Warner Brothers / 1999 / 109 mins / R