DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Ryan Gosling played an astronaut eight years ago in the Neil Armstrong drama "First Man." He returns to space in the new science fiction adventure "Project Hail Mary," but this time, he's playing a scientist on a lonely mission to save Earth from destruction. The movie was directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller of the animated "Spider-Verse" series, and it's based on a novel by Andy Weir, author of "The Martian." "Project Hail Mary" opens in theaters this week, and our film critic Justin Chang has this review.
JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: "Project Hail Mary" is about an astronaut who finds himself abandoned in outer space, where he bonds with a cute alien who tries to help him save Earth from climate change. I hate to describe a movie as a mashup of this and that, but sometimes there's no way around it. This film is basically "The Martian" meets "E.T." by way of "Interstellar." That's a handy way of summing up its appeal, but it also points to its very real limitations. I had high hopes for "Project Hail Mary," but it's the most derivative and carefully manufactured crowd-pleaser I've seen in a while. It doesn't feel like storytelling so much as mechanical engineering.
Somewhere, millions of miles from Earth, an astronaut named Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, awakens from a yearslong coma to find himself all alone on an unmanned spacecraft. The two other astronauts onboard are dead, and Grace has temporary amnesia, with no idea who or where he is. It's a fairly chilling premise on paper, but from the start, the movie plays the situation for laughs. Grace flails and falls all over the place. Gravity is in full effect. But although Gosling is a nimble physical comedian, I had trouble buying his performance. Grace might be all alone in space, but he seems to be mugging for the camera, as if he knew there was an audience watching him.
In time, Grace's memories begin to return. In regular flashbacks, we see him back on Earth, teaching middle school science. He's approached by a government official named Eva Stratt - a terrific Sandra Huller - who wants to recruit him for a top-secret mission called Project Hail Mary. She knows that years ago, Grace was one of the most important molecular biologists in the U.S. Long story short, the sun is being devoured by aggressive microbes called Astrophage. If nothing is done, the resulting global cooling will wipe out a huge chunk of Earth's population over the next few decades. Grace was chosen to join a crew of astronauts who would venture into deep space, seeking a solution to the Astrophage problem. Now, with his colleagues dead, he really is Earth's last hope.
Before long, the movie's "E.T." component kicks in. Grace meets an alien from another spaceship who looks a bit like a crab made of sandstone and whom he nicknames Rocky. Rocky's home planet, Erid, is also being threatened by Astrophage, and in time, he and Grace become friends and team up to save their respective worlds. That isn't easy, since Rocky and Grace don't speak the same language, but Grace devises a clever communication system using laptop voice translation software. In this scene, Rocky - that's the gifted puppeteer James Ortiz doing the voice and movements - encases himself in a protective, airtight ball and comes aboard Grace's ship.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PROJECT HAIL MARY")
JAMES ORTIZ: (As Rocky) Hi, Grace.
RYAN GOSLING: (As Ryland Grace) You're in a ball.
ORTIZ: (As Rocky) So Rocky no die in Grace atmosphere. I come up.
GOSLING: (As Ryland Grace) Oh, you're coming up. Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Foreign body detected.
ORTIZ: (As Rocky) Grace and Rocky, big science. How to kill Astrophage together.
GOSLING: (As Ryland Grace) OK. Hold...
ORTIZ: (As Rocky) I keep going this way. This room boring.
GOSLING: (As Ryland Grace) Rocky.
ORTIZ: (As Rocky) Science. Save Earth. Save Erid. Good plan.
GOSLING: (As Ryland Grace) No, no, no, no, no, no. No. No. No.
ORTIZ: (As Rocky) What's this down here, question? Amaze, amaze, amaze. Rocky want to see human technology.
GOSLING: (As Ryland Grace) No, no, no, no.
ORTIZ: (As Rocky) Dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty. Why room so messy, question?
GOSLING: (As Ryland Grace) Well, I wasn't expecting company, was I?
CHANG: Like "The Martian," "Project Hail Mary" was adapted by the screenwriter Drew Goddard from a novel by Andy Weir. But any comparison between the two only makes "The Martian" look better. In that 2015 film, the director, Ridley Scott, let the comedy rise naturally from an inherently tense and suspenseful story. But "Project Hail Mary" was directed by the duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who specialize in zippy irreverence. I've loved many of their earlier comedies from "21 Jump Street" to "The Lego Movie" and also their work as producers on the mind-bending "Spider-Verse" films. Here, they've made a buddy comedy about saving the world. And although Rocky and Grace's bond has a lot of charm and moments of deeper connection, it's also more than a little exhausting. The tone of the story is so flippant and the emotional beats so preordained that the larger stakes pretty much evaporate. It's as if the filmmakers had cooked up an elaborate, world-threatening scenario just so that our protagonist could go off and have a close encounter of the therapeutic kind.
You could say something similar about "Interstellar," but Christopher Nolan's film had an operatic power and a crazy conviction that compelled you to believe in it. "Project Hail Mary" feels glib and earthbound by comparison. It has a couple of strikingly shot set pieces, including a harrowing visit to another planet that might hold the key to survival. But the movie, for all its wondrous production design, doesn't have the hypnotic visual power of the best space epics. It never clues you in to what Grace must surely, on some level, be experiencing - the terrifying vastness of outer space and the fear of never being able to find your way home.
BIANCULLI: Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed "Project Hail Mary," starring Ryan Gosling.
On Monday's show, actor Riz Ahmed on his new Prime Video series, "Bait," playing a British Pakistani actor auditioning to be the next James Bond. He's also a writer and creator on the series, and he stars in a new film adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Hope you can join us.
For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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