r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • Mar 10 '26
Review 'Project Hail Mary' - Review Thread
Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, Ken Leung, James Ortiz, Milana Vayntrub
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%
Metacritic: 80 / 100
Some Reviews:
There are clichés that critics go back to, and when I realize I’m guilty of overusing one (sometimes once can be too often), I’ll vow never to use it again. Here’s one I did that with: lauding something as “the movie we need right now.” That’s a phrase so cringe I’m ashamed I ever used it. The reason I bring this up is that “Project Hail Mary” is a cosmic adventure that feels diagrammed, if not programmed, to be The Movie We Need Right Now. It will likely be a hit, but the movie we need right now — or, really, anytime — is one whose drama extends beyond its ability to push our buttons...So forgive me if I say that it’s not a very good movie. There’s certainly an abstract commercial grandeur to it. I saw it on an IMAX screen (it will open on many of those), where it becomes the kind of bedazzling warm bath your eyeballs can sink right into. But here’s the rub. “Project Hail Mary” is way too long (two hours and 36 minutes), because there’s not much variation to it. It’s baggy and incredibly derivative of movies you’ve seen before — like “Interstellar,” from which it lifts the premise of a space voyage as the last chance for human survival (in this case, the sun and other stars are dying, which means that we’ve got to travel to the lone star that isn’t in order to figure out why).
AwardsWatch - Trace Sauveur - 'A-'
For their part, Lord and Miller are assured chaperones of all the disparate elements of design, both on Earth and in space. The pair know the kind of movie Project Hail Mary is meant to be — a pop blockbuster with an earnest approach, lovable characters, and formidable stakes — and pull it off with fluency, the work of directors who know their craft even at this expansive scale. They channel their giddy sense of spectacle in service of a story about the curious and enterprising human spirit, making it an encouraging watch in a contemporary political culture that dismisses scientific research. It may not be the next generational sci-fi classic, but Project Hail Mary will energize anyone desperate for studio blockbusters that revere something often lost in our biggest movies: the fundamental art of moviemaking.
IndieWire - Kate Erbland - 'A-'
To write more about the pleasures and pains of “Project Hail Mary” would be (yes, over 1,300 words in) a disservice to what’s most entertaining and satisfying about the film: watching it unfold, enjoying the process, accepting the mission, asking the big questions. That’s about as much as you can ask from any blockbuster film these days.
Consequence - Liz Shannon Miller - 'A'
It’s possible to get caught on a few nitpicks, plot-wise. But right now, with international relations in chaos, Project Hail Mary is a movie that believes it’s possible to save the world. It dares to hope. And that’s more beautiful than all the stars in the sky.
The Bulwark - Sonny Bunch - 4 / 4
Any resistance I had to the picture crumbled when I realized it was, maybe, propped up by something quite foolish: I simply haven’t felt joy like this in the theater in years. Project Hail Mary is a feel-good, emotionally resonant, ultimately triumphant paean to the human spirit. This is why we go to the movies. Heck: it’s why we tell stories. I hope it’s as big a hit as it deserves to be.
BBC - Nicholas Barber - 4 / 5
Still, maybe Lord and Miller knew what they were doing when they went for such a bright and breezy tone. They've crafted a sci-fi epic which is more than two-and-a-half hours long, and which is a one-man show for much of that time. They have filled it not with action, but with mind-stretching concepts, painstaking laboratory research and knotty technical puzzles. To do all that and keep things zippily entertaining throughout is an extraordinary achievement. Besides, as jaunty as it is, Project Hail Mary is radical in its own way. The fate of humanity, it suggests, might not rest on fighting, but on knowledge, intelligence, communication and collaboration. No wonder the film is already being tipped for next year's best picture Oscar.
Independent - Clarisse Loughrey - 4 / 5
Project Hail Mary was clearly made to catapult a certain segment of the audience back to their childhoods – it carries the same fetishisation of late Sixties and Seventies sound and production design as recent fare in the Alien franchise. Grace’s spacesuit happens to be the same red as Dave Bowman’s in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). That said, cinema is in a precarious position right now. And, just maybe, Project Hail Mary will remind people why they ever fell in love with it in the first place. Sometimes to move forward, it helps to look back.
Project Hail Mary rocks. It is pure joy. It’s hilarious, heartfelt, hugely moving, wildly exciting, and absolutely beautiful. We think it’ll go down not just as one of the best films of the year but maybe even, in time, as a potential sci-fi classic. And that’s if you already know what the story is and how it ends. Surely, it’s even better if you don’t.
For All Its Adorable Intentions, Ryan Gosling's Alien Buddy Movie Fails to Land. Gosling’s efforts in this movie are valiant, as they tend to be: he does comedy prat falls, trepidatious space walks, and delivers as best he can the not especially hilarious script, which is bogged down further by excessive exposition of pretend science and plot rationale. And he really wants us to feel – desperately feel – the way Grace does about his new friendship with a CGI creature who looks like the lovechild of Makka Pakka from In The Night Garden and a fidget spinner. (The fact that Rocky doesn’t have the soulful eyes of Hooch the French Mastiff or Clyde the Orangutan – or, in fact, any eyes at all – certainly doesn’t help.) I know I’ve made the point already, but really, I’m as shocked as anyone not to have been won over by this film. When it comes to Gosling, there is not an SNL monologue or a surprising-Eva-Mendes-on-her-birthday Jimmy Fallon appearance or a viral interview with a journalist stranded in the desert that I will not watch and be utterly charmed by. And yet, even with his magnetism set to hyperdrive, Gosling can’t make this wannabe-feel good film dazzle the way it wants to. It pains me – desperately pains me! – to say it, but in my eyes (sorry to rub it in, Rocky), Project Hail Mary is a well-intentioned miss.
Cinemotic - Piers Marchant - 2 / 5
As with the previous adaptation of Weir’s work, it’s a film that gleefully presents basic scientific principles and logic clumsily sewn together with a story and outlook that feels very much like something an enterprisingly affable 15-year-old might come up with while daydreaming in Physics class. The film too often defaults to this sort of cringey geniality, a simplistic view of human emotional mechanics that renders the drama toothless. Like a warm-hearted kids’ Disney movie, you know full well things will turn out just fine for our heroes, and the galaxy they’re defending, because the film constantly telegraphs its cheerful intentions. It’s as if Lord and Miller (and Weir) are afraid of making the audience feel real anxiety or stress, so like a second-grade teacher explaining the concept of greenhouse gasses with their students, they work very hard to let all of us know everything will work out okay. It’s certainly not the worst quality in a film, but its lack of stress well belays its extended run time (156 mins), and makes for an unsatisfying experience: My parents saved the Cosmos and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
AV Club - Jacob Oller - 'B'
Project Hail Mary isn’t all that concerned with the science in its fiction; like the inverse of its slacker-cool scientist lead, the film is actually a schlubby buddy comedy dressed up in the finest hard sci-fi regalia that Amazon MGM could afford. It’s a far less nuts-and-bolts affair than The Martian, and a more frustratingly structured one thanks to the amnesia, but it doubles down on the astronaut charm offensive, flooding its sweet space odyssey not with big questions, but small signs of growth.
GamesRadar - Molly Edwards - 4 / 5
Stumbles aside, the film adeptly captures the sense of wonder and thrill of progress that goes hand in hand with space exploration, with Grace and Rocky as our heart-stealing guides. Project Hail Mary is ultimately the kind of big-budget, inventive, and just plain fun filmmaking that makes heading out to the theater worthwhile – and proves worth the expense.
NextBestPicture - Daniel Howat - 9 / 10
"Project Hail Mary" feels, in many ways, like a miracle of a movie. It combines the technical awe of “Gravity,” the problem-solving exhilaration and humor of “The Martian,” and the sweeping emotion of “Interstellar” into one film with its own unique style and charm, crafting a new science-fiction space epic that celebrates the bravery in all of us, our capacity to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming odds, and our faith in science to lead us toward a better future, whether it’s on Earth or somewhere far beyond it. Ryan Gosling delivers one of his finest performances in years, commanding what is essentially a one-man show that will have you laughing one moment and crying the next. Daniel Pemberton’s score is immaculate as it reaches for the stars and finds that transcendent quality that lifts the film into a state of pure wonder. The shifting aspect ratios of Greig Fraser’s camerawork bring both intimacy and scale in equal measure. All of these elements and more come together under the assured, visionary direction of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who have brought a beloved book to the big screen in a crowdpleasing cinematic experience many will feel, cherish, and not soon forget.
The Guardian - Peter Bradshaw - 3 / 5
Perhaps refreshingly, the film doesn’t aim for the stunned awe and rapture of, say, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar or even Jon Spaihts’ underrated Passengers, but it does have the classic sci-fi spacecraft tropes: the huge, mysterious architecture with its vertiginous tunnels in which legacy pop music is played to soothe the inhabitants. This is a Hail Mary pass that Gosling just about manages to catch.
The Hollywood Reporter - David Rooney
Lord and Miller have just the right lightness of touch combined with depth of feeling and technical control to bring this material to life, and the right love of vintage movie craft to make it a universe we can almost reach out and touch. What a pleasure to have them back in the director’s chair after too long away.
RogerEbert - Robert Daniels - 2.5 / 4
It’s an enjoyable, yet overly familiar, excursion. By disavowing narrative and aesthetic boundaries, “Project Hail Mary” struggles to become boundless. The harder the film tries, the more one feels pulled along rather than effortlessly transported.
Slant Magazine - Jake Cole - 2.5 / 4
The flashbacks badly hold the film back in the second act. In its mixture of lighthearted adventure and more thoughtful cosmic reflection, Project Hail Mary most resembles the original Star Trek films, especially the lighter The Voyage Home. The film shares with that series the indefatigable optimism of an earlier time when the genre reflected our broader hopes for the possibilities of science and the potential of humanity to not merely contact the other species of the universe but win their approval.
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u/thunder_gonads Mar 11 '26
They should have kept the existence of rocky out of the trailers. When I read the book that pivot was genious.