On Screen: “Project Hail Mary”
Project Hail Mary
Amazon/MGM Studio’s sci-fi epic “Project Hail Mary” is a cosmic cinematic phenomenon! In the midst of sequels and seemingly endless franchise installments clogging the multiplex, this crowd-pleasing original story blasted off with a domestic launch of $80.6 million and $141 million worldwide.
Directors Christopher Miller and Phil Lord’s optimistic adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 best-seller follows an earnest molecular biologist who befriends an extraterrestrial in an effort to save both their planets from extinction.
The story begins as utterly confused Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens from years of induced hyper-sleep — alone — on a spacecraft. He’s not an astronaut; he’s a middle school science teacher from Cleveland who’s been reluctantly recruited to unlock the mystery of the solar parasite Astrophage, a single-celled micro-organism that’s devouring the energy of stars — like the Earth’s sun.
That’s explained in a flashback, introducing Eva Stratt (German actress Sandra Huller) as the no-nonsense government official who pinpointed Grace’s radical, once-rejected, biochemical research as the unorthodox key to Earth’s survival.
Only the distant star, Tau Ceti, somehow remains immune to Astrophage and, as his spaceship traverses the Petrova Line, linking Venus and the sun, Grace discovers he’s got company — a vessel with an alien lifeform from Erid in a different solar system — on a similar mission.
Calling the non-humanoid, five-limbed entity ‘Rocky’ (for obvious reasons), Grace develops a translation device for communication and Rocky devises a solution to their incompatible atmospheric requirements, as the thriller plot melds into an interplanetary buddy movie. Benevolent Rocky (voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz) not only has a mate back on Erid but his own backstory.
If the concept reminds you of “The Martian,” it’s no coincidence; Andy Weir wrote both novels that have been adapted by screenwriter Drew Goddard, who — aided and abetted by Miller and Lord (“The LEGO Movie,” “Spider-Verse” films) — supplies charming Ryan Gosling with an array of amusing techno-pop culture references.
Problem is: at two hours 36 minutes, it’s much too long, even though Greig Fraser’s cinematography is dazzling, accompanying Daniel Pemberton’s evocative score.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Project Hail Mary” soars with an exciting, uplifting, entertaining 8, playing in theaters.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.