‘Project Hail Mary’ Review: A Space-Age Tale of Two Movies
There is a space movie out right now about a humanoid and a decidedly non-humanoid alien on a mission. They have a moving bond that is all the rage, burning up social media with reactions, theories, and memes. It’s been in everyone’s faces all year. You can’t get away from it, so I had to check it out and give my thoughts…
Project Hail Mary (What? Expecting something else taking place in a galaxy far, far away?) is a film of two distinct halves – one a transcendent, visually stunning exploration of friendship at the edge of the universe, and the other a bloated, earthbound procedural that constantly holds the film back from its own potential.
It is effectively two movies forced into a single runtime. It was a bit uneven for me, but I’m the odd one out. Sitting in a packed theater, even this far into its run, the audience’s reaction was immediate and undeniable.
Even lines I found only moderately amusing were landing with genuine laughter, the crowd clearly hooked by the snappy back-and-forth between Ryan Gosling’s Ryland Grace and his alien counterpart, Rocky (a cross between a rock formation and a crab).
There is a palpable joy in their dynamic – a winking, fun-loving energy that the film seems to know is its greatest asset. It’s a feat of acting by Gosling who carries these solitary, space-bound sequences with such ease that you quickly forget you’re watching a human perform opposite a special effect.
The space portions are so compelling that the Earthbound segments, despite being technically competent, suffer immensely by comparison. They play like a darker, self-serious echo of The Tomorrow War’s setup, leaning into the same weary tropes of boardroom panic and exposition-heavy “we gotta save the world” briefings.
When you have a lead capable of driving a narrative entirely on his own charisma and a stone alien puppet that feels more human than the bureaucratic cameos back home, those Earth scenes feel less like a necessary foundation and more like a distraction from the film’s true strength.
The narrative’s internal logic falters when it tries to bridge these worlds. The establishment of communication between Grace and Rocky is resolved with a “speedrun” efficiency that feels unearned. Instead of leaning into the agonizing, granular struggle of decoding a truly alien syntax, the film fast-tracks their fluency to keep the plot moving.
A more deliberate, scattered focus on the friction of their communication – the misunderstandings, the failures, and the slow, tactical breakthrough of ideas – would have made their eventual, profound connection feel like a hard-won victory rather than a narrative shortcut.
Ultimately, Project Hail Mary is a film of immense promise that gets in its own way. A sharper, two-hour edit that cut the “Tomorrow War fat” would have left us with a modern sci-fi classic. As it stands, it’s a visually arresting, touching experience meant to soar among the stars.
Too often, though, it forgets its own altitude, needlessly tethering itself to the ground when it doesn’t need to be there at all. Still, all the above aside and all things being equal, if your choice at the ticket counter is this or Mando and Grogu (maybe I’ll get around to that one), even I would tell you the choice is easy.
Project Hail Mary
PROS
- The space-mission portion including the rapport between Ryan Gosling and Rocky
- Greig Fraser's cinematography
- Special effects (which were practical) and Montage-style editing
CONS
- The running time
- Earth parts drag a bit
