Project Hail Mary (2026)
So this is what it's come to......
Multiplexes gasping for box office bucks as their many auditoriums remain empty for months at a time....their screens playing movies that nobody wants to move off their couch to go out and see and everybody prefers to wait until the films migrate over to the streaming services......
Like exhausted sunstroke victims crawling through a desert, theater owners wait for Hollywood to finally, finally slake their thirst with a bona fide popcorn blockbuster.....at long last a movie that everybody can't wait to enjoy on the big screen, in big stereo, with a big bag of popcorn that could easily feed a third world nation for year......
Believe us when we tell you that once upon a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Hollywood studios use to produce such films on a regular basis. And we all crowded into theaters to let them envelop us on a huge screen with Dolby wraparound stereo loud enough to shake our teeth loose.
Remember the summer of 2023, the summer of 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer'? Seems like ancient history now......
Now, after a long drought, comes Amazon-MGM to catch the lightning-in-a-bottle required to lure huge crowds back into those multiplex seats...... with its 200 million dollar budgeted 'Project Hail Mary', a refreshing, funny, exciting, suspenseful eye-popping, heart rending popcorn thrill ride.....the kind of all ages appealing film that studios seem capable of producing only sporadically.
Based on 'The Martian' novelist Andy Weir's bestseller, it presents us with our most endearing movie star Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, one of the most flawed but sympathetic characters who's ever fronted a major film.
Ryland, a disgraced, molecular biology PhD and now a beloved middle school science teacher, finds himself recruited and tasked with no less than saving the universe as we know it from sun-devouring microbes. Stuck on a spaceship with a dead crew and not a clue, Grace strikes up a classic buddy relationship with his most surprising ally.....a spider-like alien made of rocks who's been sent on the same mission to save his home planet too.
Together, Grace and 'Rocky' take us on a journey leaving us breathless, stunned, elated, heartbroken, tearful, cheering and at times, laughing out loud for joy. Is it any wonder moviegoers are lining up for this?
Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (of "The Lego Movie" and "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse") work real wonders here and Gosling deploys his killer deadpan charm at its most charismatic. Another bonus MVP: actress Sandra Huller (of "The Zone of Interest" and "Anatomy of a Fall") as Gosling's iron-willed superior (and one hell of a karaoke belter).
And a special standing ovation to composer Daniel Pemberton for a rich symphonic score as wildly eclectic as the film itself.....overpowering, majestic, pulse-racing, and even playful and witty.
Having heaped all this praise on the film, we don't pretend to know what formula exists to make a popcorn blockbuster like 'Hail Mary'. As celebrated screenwriter William Goldman once said of the powers-that-be in Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything". In short, maybe it's pure serendipity when the right actors, the right story and the right filmmakers all come together....hitting the Zeitgeist pop culture sweet spot to birth a massive hit.
(Keep in mind, we had similar opinions about "The Fall Guy", another Ryan Gosling romp also designed to be a sure fire crowd pleaser. We loved it, but nobody showed up. The answer? Well....William Goldman said it all....who knows?)
We do know 'Project Hail Mary' is more than worth parking yourself into one of those nice reclining multiplex seats and let it work its magic on you. As Rocky the alien frequently cries out, "Amaze, amaze, amaze!"
5 stars (*****).
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