Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace in a scene from "Project Hail Mary." (Photo by Jonathan Olley, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
“Project Hail Mary,” the highly anticipated screen adaptation of Andy Weir's best-selling sci-fi novel, might predominantly take place in outer space, but it keeps its feet firmly planted on the ground. To complete Casey Kasem's “American Top 40” sign-off quote, it still reaches for the stars, only in this case, the stars in question are on life support.
The new feature by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the directing duo behind “The LEGO Movie” and the big-screen reboot of “21 Jump Street,” is comfort-food cinema filled with analog trappings and warmly inviting tropes. We've taken this space voyage before, and that's okay. That it retains its winsome, can-do spirit despite sobering stakes that place humankind on the chopping block is part of its cross-generational appeal.
Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace and Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt in a scene from "Project Hail Mary." (Photo credit: Jonathan Olley. Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
Another winning element is that the intrepid galactic explorer who spearheads this plus-sized sci-fi adventure is not some brawny action hero but a goofy, socially awkward man of science. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Ryland Grace, an astronaut who wakes up in a spacecraft he doesn't remember boarding, has Ryan Gosling's good looks, but the “La La Land” and “Drive” star clearly cherishes the opportunity to play a brainy nerd. His enthusiasm is contagious.
That's a good thing, because “Project Hail Mary” runs into trouble pretty early on. Dr. Grace awakens from a coma to find he has no memories and the rest of his crew has perished. Who is he? Why is he there? It's a killer hook for anyone who read Weir's hefty 2021 book, since the author forces the reader to discover what the hell is going on through Grace's blinkered perspective. The not knowing provides the thrust to keep turning those pages.
Lord and Miller opt to speed things up, promptly laying things out to viewers, in the process depriving viewers from the novel's more prolonged process of discovery. The film's trailers succinctly overexplain things, but so does Act 1 in Drew Goddard's screenplay. The bottom line: Grace does not stay an amnesiac for long, and we're the poorer for it.
Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace in a scene from "Project Hail Mary." (Photo by Jonathan Olley, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
Flashback sequences do a lot of heavy lifting, as we soon learn the bewildered space traveler was a disgraced molecular biologist who's teaching middle school kids when he's approached by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), a government agent with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Scientists are perplexed to find the Earth's sun is dimming, and they believe an infrared line that extends from the sun to Venus may be behind the phenomenon.
Grace joins the world's most gifted scientific minds to decipher this mystery, and it's not good news: The sun's dimming will bring about a new ice age within 30 years that will eradicate humans, and a rather voracious microorganism is the culprit. Meanwhile, back on the ship, this futuristic Robinson Crusoe discovers he's not alone. What follows is a close encounter of a cuddly kind, as Grace makes contact with an alien who looks like an animated rock.
Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt and Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace in a scene from "Project Hail Mary." (Photo by Jonathan Olley, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
“Animated” is the key word here. The fellow traveler that looks like mini rock formations thrown together, named Rocky by Grace, is an inspired blend of puppetry and animation, and it goes to show a puppet will always be more expressive than any CGI. There might be a language barrier between these space drifters, which Grace handles in a way that recalls Denis Villeneuve's “Arrival,” only far more lighthearted, but they quickly realize they have a lot in common. Comparisons to “E.T.” have surfaced, but Rocky's personality hews closer to “Short Circuit's” Johnny 5 from where I was sitting.
The rest of “Project Hail Mary” shuttles back and forth between the scenes on the ship where Grace is stranded, as his memories continue to come back, and the scenes on Earth, where we discover the circumstances that took him so far from home. Goddard's narrative structure might have looked good on the page, but given the urgency of the film's bleak doomsday scenario, the film's flow takes a hit every time Lord and Miller go back in time.
Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace in a scene from "Project Hail Mary." (Photo by Jonathan Olley, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
The lumpy pacing poses a challenge that lessens the impact of this film across two and a half hours, but what further hobbles “Project Hail Mary” needlessly is an abundance of juvenile jokes that too often place the comic relief in the driver's seat. As when he adapted “The Martian,” Weir's previous novel, for the screen, Goddard jettisons much of the science jargon in the source material but retains the author's immature, occasionally cringe-inducing humor. Example: Rocky still hasn't gotten a handle on American phrases, so fist bump becomes “fist my bump.” Har dee har har.
The movie version of “The Martian,” starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain, had director Ridley Scott to rein in all those disco music and ABBA references, but Lord and Miller think Weir's schoolyard zingers are just darling. So they go overboard in a way that Scott didn't. They don't seem to realize that a little of this silliness goes a looooooong way. The filmmakers have also seen fit to integrate a music score, by Daniel Pemberton, that sounds as if it's underlining every emotion with a Sharpie.
Still, it's hard to stay mad at Weir for long, and this also applies to Lord and Miller and what they've done here. Because what's really striking about “Project Hail Mary” is how its makers are able to sustain a tonal double helix that juggles the sweet buddy-movie bond between Grace and Rocky with the gravity of the expiration date that has been put on the human race. It's popcorn entertainment that never loses sight of its potentially species-ending scenario.
Actually, my favorite scene has very little to do with outer space and a lot more to do with a breach of trust. It manages to be grim and absurdly funny at the same time. The directors' background in animation is palpable everywhere you look, which is to the benefit of the film's visual style and its tip of the hat to films like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Interstellar,” with which it shares some DNA.
Gosling and Hüller are both more than up to the challenge of harnessing the contours of Lord and Miller's tonal high-wire act. Gosling gives a commanding movie star performance that matches the scope and magnitude of this production. His Grace is reminiscent of Jeff Bridges in the 1970s and early '80s, and looks like him, too, especially when his character is wearing glasses. As for Hüller, whom you might remember from her Oscar-nominated turn in “Anatomy of a Fall” or the German father-daughter dramedy “Toni Erdmann,” she tempers Stratt's no-nonsense approach to saving the world in empathy that she doles out in brief, carefully controlled doses. The film could have used more of her discipline.
Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace and Lionel Boyce as Carl in a scene from "Project Hail Mary." (Photo by Jonathan Olley, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
But “Project Hail Mary” stays in orbit, despite being saddled with so much counterproductive baggage. It's precious and cartoonish when there's no good reason for it to be, yet it's also bent, for a considerable amount of its running time, in the shape of a character study, a small victory for an enterprise of this size. (See what I did there?) It's a paean to resilience and all-American optimism that nails its creator's distinctive voice, for good and ill. Okay, fine, mostly for good.
“Project Hail Mary” is now showing across South Florida in wide release, including IMAX and Dolby Cinema engagements at AMC Aventura and AMC Sunset Place. It is also playing at the AutoNation IMAX at the Museum of Discovery and Science in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
