Review: Project Hail Mary – Lost in space

Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Starring Ryan Gosling, James Ortiz, Sandra Huller

7/10

Coming from the novel by The Martian author Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary appears to have a similar story and comedic tone, with a lone spaceman being left stranded, needing to find his way home (and this time, also save his home planet). It initially feels like a retread of not just that film but quite a few others in the sci-fi pantheon, but Project Hail Mary eventually finds its own unique and personal path (in its lengthy 156-minute runtime).

Quite a lot of the film is a one-man show of Grace (Ryan Gosling), wandering around in an empty spacecraft with no idea as to how he got there (other than the flashbacks back home teased out across the film). But he gets a co-star when an extraterrestrial life form appears, with the two of them conversing in a barrier between their two ships. Grace gives him the name Rocky, as he resembles a monster crab but is rockier, and spends what seems like a quick amount of time translating his language so he can talk to him through a computer (voiced and puppeteered by James Ortiz).

At first, Rocky seems like quite an annoying kid, filled with an untameable energy, particularly when he’s let aboard Grace’s ship. And this annoyance really translates to the viewer, with Rocky’s stumbly, colloquial kind of humour matching that of his new human sidekick.

Yet as the film delves into their plight to save humanity (of both lifeforms), this aggravating humour thankfully takes a sidestep as we see the heroic actions of both human and rock alien as they do what they can to save their planets, or at least their own friendship. Although this friendship building is accomplished through some pretty standard plot points that make it easy (with Rocky’s cutesy squealing helping with his infantilisation), the film’s big, brash, and unsubtle directorial style does succeed in (eventually) generating a close relationship between the two, as if they’re the last two living beings in the galaxy.

For at least the first half of the film, Project Hail Mary seems more at home replicating other sci-fi films rather than forging its own path in this genre. The sun-saving mission is pretty identical to that in Sunshine; it features a lone character in space communicating with a non-human like the Moon, it has flashback scenes of Grace being inducted into classified affairs like in Arrival, it shares the dazzling beauty of outer space as seen in Interstellar and Ad Astra, and it features in little moments here and there direct references to 2001 and Close Encounters.

It shares much of the same humour as The Martian, which comes from a pained sense of keeping your humanistic bearings while lost in space. But whereas the humour in The Martian felt integral to the psychological well-being of its protagonist, here it comes across as either unsuccessfully derivative of that film or unnecessarily grating.

But what does Project Hail Mary offer as a film of its own? It doesn’t end up aiming for the stars like its influences had done, instead feeling more comfortable standing on the shoulders of these great films in the genre. Project Hail Mary does end up taking quite some time to get going (in its lengthy 156-minute runtime, reminding you again), but in its second half, it becomes more original, more sure of itself, and more dazzling to witness.

DAVID MORGAN-BROWN