Project Hail Mary (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
5 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 12 hours ago

PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026)

Starring Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub, James Wright, Alice Brittain, Orion Lee, Aaron Neil, Robert James Smith, Isla McRae, Bastian Antonio Fuentes, Richie Cheung, Travis Jay and the voices of James Ortiz and Priya Kansara.

Screenplay by Drew Goddard.

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 156 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Many years ago there was a famous TV commercial. A guy was walking around the corner eating chocolate. Another guy was walking around the other side of the corner and eating a jar of peanut butter. They collide as they go around the corner. They are on the ground, and one says, “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter.” The other guy says, “You got your peanut butter on my chocolate.” And they both taste it, and realize, hey, it’s good together.

I’m sure you’re wondering what this old commercial has to do with Project Hail Mary. Don’t worry, I’m getting to it.

Imagine two guys on the corner. But one is carrying a serious sci-fi novel, and the other is carrying a comedy. Does it have comedy in its sci-fi? Or is it science fiction that happens to be funny? And if either way, can it really work?

The answer is: mostly, yes. Project Hail Mary is trying to mix two very different things at once. Imagine The Martian with Ferris Bueller leading the expedition, and you’ll have a basic idea of the groove of Project Hail Mary. The good news is that it works a lot more often than it doesn’t.

In fact, it’s kind of surprising how well it does work out. Take, for example, the alien life form that the wise-cracking and unwilling space traveler, science teacher Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) runs across when he is shanghaied into trying to save the Earth when the sun is dying. Another alien species has sent a representative to look into the situation, an alien that Grace eventually nicknames Rocky.

Rocky is one of the most ridiculous looking alien creatures I’ve ever seen in science fiction – a walking rock pile that looks like a Stonehenge monolith which has sprouted a few extra extremities and can move. Yet, who’d’ve thought, once Grace and Rocky figure out a way to communicate, damned if Rocky doesn’t turn out to be an extremely likable character. You just never know.

That is important, because for great stretches of Project Hail Mary, the scientist and the alien are the only living beings on screen. All the other humans are pretty much shown in flashback, and only a conniving scientist played by German actress Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) really has much to do here. Particularly wasted is a Russian cosmonaut played by the always likable Milana Vayntrub (who is still best known for a series of AT&T commercials as phone salesperson Lily, and barely has a dozen lines here.)

Truth is, Project Hail Mary works better in its comic moves than its science fiction plot, which seems fairly similar to many other semi-recent films like The Martian, Interstellar, Arrival and Gravity. It’s wisecracking hero (actually heroes, Rocky eventually gets off some good lines too once he learns to communicate) is what makes this movie feel kind of unique. Of course, it helps that the comedy is actually pretty well done, which doesn’t always work in this kind of film. (We’re looking at you, Guardians of the Galaxy.)

I can’t really imagine watching Project Hail Mary with any regularity, but it was a lot more fun than I expected, and that’s something, right?

Jay S. Jacobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m08TxIsFTRI