Project Hail Mary

Grade: B-

In Project Hail Mary, Ryan Gosling’s reason for being sent to space is your typical sci-fi-ish one. It’s complicated, convoluted, and of course it includes fancy names for fictional materials which begin with the prefix Astro. It’s the plot point that interested me the least, and anything related to it, including the so-called action sequences, I found to be the most boring. The real heart and charm of the movie comes in the unexpected humor, Gosling’s appealing everyman performance, and the intergalactic friendship that forms.

Throughout the entire film, we jump back and forth between Gosling’s current journey on the ship, and the events leading up to his being on board. I liked the incremental nature of the storytelling, as the last crucial puzzle piece from the backstory is saved for near the end. Gosling is Dr. Ryland Grace. On Earth, he was a middle school science teacher. A dissertation he wrote has caught the eye of Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller from Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest), who recruits him to be a part of what they call the Hail Mary project.

They have discovered that the sun is slowly having the life sucked out of it, due to an infrared line connecting it to Venus. Every 30 years, the earth’s temperature will drop 10-15 degrees. That’s good news if you live in Arizona – and beyond that, none of us will be around for when it gets really bad. But I get it. Gotta think about the future. They’ve found a star several light years away (similar to the sun) that has the same line, yet doesn’t seem to be affected. If this team can find out what’s keeping this star from depleting, maybe this can be prevented back home.

Dr. Grace wakes up on the ship after being “out” for 11 years. I hope he had a catheter. The other two humans on board are already deceased, but they were informed going in that this was a one-way ticket anyway. The movie is funnier than I thought it would be, with a consistent stream of silly lines and bits. There’s a language barrier between Grace and his new alien friend who he names Rocky. When teaching him about hugs and fist bumps, Rocky keeps requesting one by saying “fist my bump.”

What happens with Grace and Rocky, and why, is what drew me in the most. In the early days of setting up a communication technique between the two, before settling on a man’s voice (provided by James Ortiz), he tries out others, including a brief vocal cameo from Meryl Streep. He says “she can do anything.” Streep and Gosling have never worked together on a movie, but they’ve met at various functions. Either way, it’s a cute in-joke.

This is a beautiful movie to look at – almost too much so. It eventually feels like the filmmakers are just showing off. I’m not sure how necessary some of those visuals were. A couple of them looked like backgrounds I would pick to put behind the lyrics of worship songs at my church. Music is used well. It must cost a fortune to get an original studio recording of a Beatles song for your movie, which is why it doesn’t happen often. There’s one here that’s presented in a way I’ve never heard before, with the vocals taken out, and it’s fascinating. As we keep cutting back to the past, Hüller gets a significant amount of screen time, and it’s great to see her again. She and Gosling were nominated for Oscars in the same year, and seeing the two of them together was a delightful throwback to what may end up being the best year for movies this decade.

The ending is lovely, narratively and visually. It definitely brought to mind another space movie that I won’t name here. Project Hail Mary, at 2 hours and 36 minutes, is a bit bloated, but the story is engaging (almost exhausting) and it’s a reminder of the personality and star power that Gosling can bring to the table. It’s the kind of role Brad Pitt might have played 25-30 years ago. The Rocky relationship, and the progression of that arc, for me, was the film’s emotional core. That’s what fisted my bump.

Grade: B-