By Kurt Jensen, OSV News
NEW YORK (OSV News) – A lack of originality, treacly sentiment and a wholly unjustified two-hour, 36-minute running time combine to weigh down the sci-fi adventure “Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM).
While it does include themes that might prove too frightening for little kids, the film is nonetheless sufficiently free of objectionable content to make it appropriate for teens as well as grown-ups. Whether young adults will be any more convinced by the rather hackneyed proceedings than their elders, however, is another question.
This adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 novel, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from a screenplay by Drew Goddard, tells a pleasing story about an altruistic effort to save the earth from impending extinction. Yet some elements of the plot feel overly familiar.
The movie’s central character, for instance, plucky molecular biologist Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), is that oft-seen figure, the stranded astronaut. The mechanical sidekick he eventually acquires, moreover, is a cute alien he names Rocky (voice of James Ortiz).
Grace awakens from a 12-year induced coma as the film opens to find that the pilot and engineer, the only other crew members on his craft, are dead. Since he’s suffering from temporary amnesia, he’s not initially sure what he’s doing there and the details only come back to him gradually. So we get exposition by way of flashbacks.
As Grace’s memory clears, he understands that it’s now his job to complete the last-ditch, hail-mary-pass mission on which he and the others had embarked. For reasons that eventually become clear, it amounts to a harrowing quest.
Scientists back on Earth, we learn, had discovered a dim line of infrared radiation from the sun to Venus, which they dubbed the Petrova Line. This line is dimming the sun at a rate that guarantees a new ice age in 30 years, thus spelling doom for humanity.
In response to the crisis, Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller), a former administrator of the European Space Agency, recruited Grace to investigate the situation. It was a somewhat surprising choice.
Grace, it turns out, is a maverick with a lengthy history of not getting along with other scientists. In fact, by the time Stratt contacted him, he’d abandoned research in favor of teaching middle school.
The solution Grace eventually came up with involved traveling to a distant star, Tau Ceti. So, by the time he comes to, he’s light years from Earth. Yet that’s not the worst aspect of his situation.
There’s only enough of the rare fuel powering his ship to collect the space material Grace hopes will stop the fatal phenomenon and send a cargo of it back to Earth. He and the others knew from the start that they would not be returning from their expedition but would instead be left to perish in space.
Fortunately, the unexpected presence of Rocky — who’s also out to save his home planet by journeying to Tau Ceti — offers hope for better things. As the movie showcases the value of communication and cooperation, Grace also undergoes a gradual conversion in the direction of greater compassion.
Ultimately, the audience is bombarded by more morals of the story than a long-ago Afterschool Special might have boasted. Yet Gosling’s charisma — he’s in virtually every scene — goes a long way toward making Grace’s feel-good story at least somewhat enjoyable.
The film contains intense action sequences and fleeting grim imagery. The OSV News classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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