Review | ‘Project Hail Mary’ shoots for the stars and your tear ducts
Collage by Easton Clark, Photo Editor
“Project Hail Mary” has just about everything you could want from a big-screen space adventure: moments of triumph amongst the stars, a lovable (and I mean lovable) extraterrestrial companion and a remarkable performance from a bona fide movie star. It’s got all that, and yet I still left wanting just a little more.
Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up from an induced coma to find he’s in the middle of space with two dead crewmates and a mission to execute on a craft called the Hail Mary. As he pieces together how he got there, we return to his life on Earth before he entered space. He’s a middle school science teacher, approached by the head of a project (Sandra Hüller) to help solve the rapid deterioration of our sun due to a mysterious substance feeding off it. He’s not alone on the Hail Mary for long before he meets an alien he aptly names Rocky (James Ortiz) who’s on the same mission. Together, they form a bond and seek to save their respective homes.
Ryan Gosling is quite wonderful here; this material blends his goofiness — which has become a focal point of his work in recent years — and the sadness that is prevalent in so many of his characters. There’s a scene where Rocky offers Grace some hope of returning home after Grace has informed him that he’s prepared to die in the far reaches of space, as the mission was designed. Watching Gosling come apart at kindness in the face of grave uncertainty, he has such a direct way of transmitting those emotions to an audience it astounds me.
He’s a fitting figure to anchor this kind of narrative; he’s always been easy to root for, but it's the moments when his sense of heroism falters that are the most engaging. When his bravery becomes a choice rather than an expectation, that's something he can credibly communicate. The bond he creates with a little rock guy is so affecting that you almost forget that Gosling isn't interacting with his best friend or even a fellow thespian.
And we must talk about Grace’s partner in crime, Rocky. Folks, let me tell you, you’re not ready for this guy. In every way, this creature defies what one might expect from the little guys from space that we tend to gravitate towards (Baby Yodas, Baby Groots, etc.). Rocky has no eyes to gaze into, an awkward mish-mash of limbs with a rock in the center, like something a kid would draw while bored in math class. And yet, you will learn to love this rock creature and his soul. I assure you.
At one point, Grace finds himself walking atop the craft in pursuit of the solution to both of their missions, and Rocky finds himself helplessly on the edge of his seat watching his friend face increasing tension. This moment shifts Rocky from a mere curiosity, a visual marvel, to a real character and, in these moments, an audience surrogate. Not an excuse to sell plushes, but the heart and soul of this movie.
Having seen her play some of the most hauntingly cold and calculating characters I’ve ever seen on-screen, watching the great German actress Sandra Hüller guiding Ryan Gosling through cosmic quandaries is jarring. But in many ways, she fits right in.
Where Gosling seems to express everything a little louder than the suits and lab coats around him, she is bound to her unflappable composure, frequently blunt, sometimes painfully so. If she’s made of stone, he’s made of bubblewrap, each pop eliciting a yelp that has become somewhat indelible to his screen persona.
This juxtaposition makes a scene where Hüller picks up the mic and does a karaoke rendition of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” not just surprising, but moving through Hüller’s performance. Hüller sounds great, sure, but more than that, she commits. It’s not for laughs; the lyrics of Styles become her character’s emotional gospel, an expression of the toll looking down the barrel of Earth’s extinction takes on her. It’s a moment that elicits a wonder almost as great as the interstellar vistas the movie showcases later on.
For a movie with a sense of audacity built into its very tale, it can just play things a little safe. Perhaps it’s my standards for directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, but the people who told a grand story of prophecy using entirely animated plastic bricks and brought back a relic of an 80s cop show and mined it for comedic gold usually have more tricks up their sleeve than this.
Once this movie settles into what it is, leaping periodically between Gosling’s adventures with Rocky and then returning to reveal what led him to the point, the structure tires itself out as the film progresses. It makes sense initially to place one in Gosling’s total confusion with how he’s ended up in the middle of the stars with two corpses. However, once we’ve met Rocky and the dynamic that really powers this movie through it all, doubling back and returning to Earth with Gosling reluctant to plunge into the depths of space starts to feel redundant.
“Project Hail Mary” has sights and sounds that’ll stay with you long after you leave the theater, but given my passion for the creative team and their past work, I must admit I left ever so slightly disappointed. That said, the way this movie pulls sobs out of you should be studied; it’s the kind of emotional wizardry that usually only Pixar movies can pull off. It takes off and returns to the atmosphere without incident, but I kept waiting for something within “Hail Mary” to really amaze me.
