Three out of four stars
How much do you like science fiction? No disrespect meant to Ryan Gosling, but that’s the only question that matters when it comes to whether or not you’ll enjoy Project Hail Mary, a 156-minute epic about the vastness of the galaxy (in theaters Friday, March 20).
Based on the beloved novel by Andy Weir (The Martian) and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the story takes place in the near future, when the people of Earth are on borrowed time thanks to a mysterious substance that’s killing the sun. A dangerous info-gathering trip to the outer orbits of Venus is humanity’s only hope.
The VFX are truly stunning, and any fan of Spielberg-ian aliens or space exploration will be delighted. While Weir’s story is fairly bare-bones, the gorgeous imagery does a lot of work in making this a memorable adventure.
Gosling, who seems poised to get an Oscar nomination for this role, plays Ryland Grace, a brilliant, quippy biologist who is a middle-school science teacher and who for spoiler-y reasons awakes on a spaceship years into a mysterious journey. Large swaths of the movie involve him, alone, free-floating and attempting to piece together what happened and how to rescue the world. This could have been ultra-serious, but in the actor’s capable hands more often than not it’s quite funny.
In flashback, viewers also learn more about Ryland’s past life and why this mission is so personally important to him. It’s here we meet a hard-charging scientist/bureaucrat, Eva (played by Anatomy of a Fall’s Sandra Hüller), practically the only other named person in this adventure.
The buzziest takeaway — memes incoming! — will be Rocky, an alien creature that, yup, looks like a pile of rocks. The film basically becomes a buddy comedy as Rocky and Ryland work together to communicate and problem-solve their way safely home. I confess here that the journey at certain points got to be too long for me, but it’s likely to feel good to anyone — including older kids — who love puzzles and group projects, not to mention the thrill of discovering that we’re not alone.
