“Project Hail Mary”
“Project Hail Mary” (156 min, Rated PG-13 for some thematic material and suggestive references) 7 out of 10
By far and away, science-fiction is my favorite film genre…has been since I was a kid growing up in the 1950s. I’m a regular sci-fi geek. I can name you 30 sci-fi/monster films from the 1950s off the top of my head. Therefore, you’d think “Project Hail Mary” would be right up my alley…and from a broad perspective, it is. But there are many things about this large-scaled, impressively-mounted production that’s more focused on the awe and spectacle of outer space than on providing plausible, rational scientific explanations to the phenomena it presents.
As scripted by Drew Goddard and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, this adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 novel (he wrote “The Martian”) is over-bloated and needlessly long with a plot dynamic that feels like it came from a comic book rather than a science-based book. Collectively, it tries to cover too much, featuring a mind-blowing premise: for some inexplicable reason, a cosmic force is causing our sun, and billions of other stars in the universe, to start blinking out. It will take our best minds to figure out why before it’s too late. I love it…a profound sci-fi subject.
That leads us to Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) waking up aboard a spaceship from Earth that has been traveling for 113.8 years to the one star that isn’t burning out and solve the problem he helped research on Earth. What they’ve identified is technobabble complicated involving cosmic particles found emanating from Venus to the sun — the same with other planets throughout the universe. Grace is a brilliant molecular biologist, now a geeky science schoolteacher, recruited by a multi-nation space agency to find out why this star isn’t dimming. It’s a Hail Mary save-the-earth mission.
However, when Grace awakens after such a long time in hyperspace stasis, he finds that the two astronauts he was traveling with are dead, leaving him alone to apply the science to stop the dimming effect on the star. By the time Grace has regained his strength and memory, we’ve been subjected to numerous backflashes as to how Grace was selected for this do-or-die mission with him doing everything humanly possible to NOT go. He’s not the hero type, nor feels qualified.
But push comes to shove and Grace has no choice but to join the crew on this desperation mission — and now having arrived at this distant star, discovers that an immense alien craft has parked right next to him, it too with only one remaining crewmember…a friendly cube-shaped, five-legged rock-spider. Frightened at first, Grace and Rocky, so named by Grace, begin working together to solve the problem. As they learn how to communicate, they begin a tender friendship based on mutual curiosity — and loneliness. It’s cute and poignant, but aren’t they on the clock to save the universe?
Don’t get me wrong…the scenes between Grace and his interstellar buddy are heartwarming, but it all but undermines the dire consequences at hand. Is this the right time to focus on an emotionally-tugging friendship between two alien races when the fate of the universe is at stake? It’s supposed to be the cosmic voyage of all time…not an interplanetary buddy movie. This I know won’t be shared by many who see this film, regarding the cutesy humor between Grace and Rocky to be as important as saving the universe serving as the emotional center of the story.
I love Ryan Gosling, but in this film, his flippant, non-serious, unsympathetic persona makes you wonder why he was picked for this mission. As adorable as Rocky is, I never for a moment felt this creature was anything more than an animatronic puppet. I loved Sandra Huller’s stoic, dry sense of humor as the leader of the Hail Mary Project, but only for comic attention. As to the film’s stellar message of reaching out to the heavens for answers to our place in the vast expanse of outer space, I loved it and was overwhelmed by the film’s superlative depiction of deep space. But the story features a fanciful blend of science and fantasy with giggly comic moments with an ET learning how to fist-pump with its newfound human friend.
I’m not sure what portions of the movie are going to thrill audiences the most — and I’m not sure what sect of the audience the film was targeted at…it seems to be across-the-board. With the film being as long as it is, it puts a strain on your willing suspension of disbelief to accept it on its own terms. “Project Hail Mary” opens at theaters on March 20.
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