I am not quite sure where to begin with this review. Project Hail Mary reminds me of why I love movies (and Ryan Gosling). The score? The cinematography? The visual effects? The script?  There are a million points I would like to make about this film, and I’m assuming you don’t have all day, so to cut a long story short, I think I left a piece of my heart behind when I left. I absolutely adored the film and felt every possible human emotion whilst watching. Review over, you can go home. 

I’m joking, please stay, and continue reading. 

I had extremely conflicting thoughts and expectations about going into Project Hail Mary, an adaptation of Andy Weir’s sci-fi bestseller. Over the past four years of owning the book, I have attempted to read it on three separate occasions, but have never managed to get past the first 100 pages. I put this down to my never having read any science fiction before and found the language used very space-heavy and a little confusing for my small girl brain. However, upon writing this review and watching the film, I am giving the book one last chance. I would like to happily announce that I am past the first one hundred pages, huzzah! However, my love of Ryan Gosling and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie) allowed me to bypass my original judgments of the source material and gain some hype and belief that maybe, just maybe, I would enjoy this adaptation, and boy, was I correct. 

Project Hail Mary starts out extremely true to the book (as I have read, three times), with high school teacher, Dr Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), as he wakes up from an induced coma, on a spaceship, 11 light-years away from Earth, with zero memory of how or why he is there. He stumbles upon the rest of his crew, who are deceased, and through a series of flashbacks, he slowly comes to and remembers his original mission: to save humanity from the dying sun. Gosling is effortlessly funny and captures all the charm and humour of the book. There is a lot to say about this, as Grace is presently on screen for about 99% of the film, with the film sitting at over two and a half hours long, commendibly, there are a very few dull moments, filled with breezy humour that is silly, and provides great laughs, for the whole audience, there are also moments where silence is utilised to its fulllest, where it’s breathtaking, and almost moved me to tears (we shall talk about the copious amount of tears shed in a minute). 

The undoubted show-stealer is Rocky, an adorable spider-like bunch of rocks alien life force, whom I would go to war for. Perhaps it’s the uncanniness of his personality of matching my beloved family dog, Colin, but I love Rocky, and found that he was by far one of my favourite elements to the story, and who knew, he was a bit of a diva. 

Adding a co-lead certainly helped the film progress and provided a great outlet for Grace’s witty humour; the back-and-forth between the two was highly entertaining. The bromance (?) between Grace and Rocky is one for the books, and made me shed many a tear throughout the film. If I weren’t in a fully packed audience, I’m sure I would’ve been wailing at a certain point. With each other’s help, Grace and Rocky save the stars, sending a clear message: although alien to each other, they are stronger together than when working alone in fear. Their buddy relationship is one that is likened to E.T and Elliot and the Mandalorian and Grogu, and one that shall leave an imprint on the hearts of many audiences for years to come. 

Whilst Project Hail Mary is at times slow-burning, as characters go back and forth in trial and error and building relationships, and doesn’t have the sensationalism of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, or other space-focused movies, that’s not to say, that Project Hail Mary fails to deliver on the classic tropes of science fiction, it does it in a more subtle way that is easy to digest, specifically for younger viewers, and I believe will be a modern-day classic in the genre. With the opening weekend only just passing, mine and many, many other rave reviews are making it a popular hit, that will continue to smash at the box office, and hopefully sweep at next year’s awards season

There is one last thing I would like to say, Fist my bump.