REVIEW: Project Hail Mary

By Thomas Fink | May 4, 2026

Movie Rating: ★★★★

Photo Credit: Wikipedia; Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios

Is it just me or is there a shortage of movies today that are unable to entertain everyone? It seems to me that modern films are struggling with juggling multiple qualities. 

For example, although I found the romantic drama “Reminders of Him” to be refreshing with its charm and sweetness, its staying power was ruined by its overly predictable plot and simplistic story. It’s too safe and too generic for it to be truly memorable.

Another example is “Wuthering Heights." Emerald Fennell’s audacious reimagining of Emily Bronte’s classic novel impressed me with its daring, sleazy sexual content, but its overly melancholy tone and (wannabe-art-house) overly slow pace renders it too cold and too cynical to confidently recommend.

What I’m getting at is that too many movies today are only successful at being one thing: having just one attribute and being successful in that singular regard. A lot of movies aimed at adults try too hard to be serious and slow-paced and “artsy” which makes them difficult to appeal to audiences looking for concrete entertainment value. And lots of popcorn flicks aimed at younger, casual audiences may succeed at being entertaining, but their storylines are too basic and familiar and safe that their inability of being multi-layered can make them rather forgettable. 

Over the last several months, I’ve been thinking about this hypothesis of mine as it’s one of the main reasons why I find cinema’s post-COVID era (essentially the 2020s decade) to have been a fairly weak period for the movies. 

Enter “Project Hail Mary." This is a great film. Let me cut to the case right there. This is the kind of film that Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to make more often–one that succeeds on every level and that is made for everybody. 

“Project Hail Mary” has plenty of heart and soul–so much so, it has more heart and soul than most movies I saw in the last year or so combined. And yet, it’s never sappy nor overly-sentimental. It has an abundance of sweetness, but it’s never “cutesy.” The story has some brainy elements for the science geeks, but the general narrative is thoroughly easy to follow. And although it is relatively family-friendly, it manages to carefully throw in a few sly innuendos (for the adults too accustomed to R-rated fare) that aren’t too crass nor too obvious as to not pollute the wholesomeness of the thing.

It’s also funny as hell and contains some unexpected, but effective emotionally moving moments. I can’t believe I teared up over a rock and you won’t believe you will either. 

Perhaps my one quibble with “Project Hail Mary” is that a certain plot point in the third act (which I won’t divulge) may be a little too predictable, but upon my second viewing having re-evaluated the entire storyline and the film’s spirit, it wouldn’t have worked any other way. 

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”; “21 Jump Street”; “The Lego Movie”), “Project Hail Mary” is a space-epic and sci-fi adventure based on Andy Weir’s best-selling 2021 novel. Weir is best known for “The Martian” which was adapted into Ridley Scott’s 2015 blockbuster of the same name starring Matt Damon. 

Both film adaptations of Weir’s works were written by Drew Goddard who deserves to be labelled as among the finest storytellers working in Hollywood today. His screenwriting credits include “Cloverfield," “Bad Times at the El Royale," and (co-written with Joss Whedon) “The Cabin in the Woods."As he received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Martian," let’s hope he’ll receive a second nod for “Project Hail Mary”. 

The plot: Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens from an induced coma aboard a spacecraft. As his memory slowly returns, we learn, through flashbacks, that he is a middle-school science teacher–and, with a Ph.D. in molecular biology, an over-qualified one at that. Dr. Grace is recruited by a government agent, Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller), as his controversial scholarly research (which ended his academic career) becomes relevant to a serious interstellar issue. And do I mean serious?!

Get this: we learn that Earth is under threat from a mysterious micro-organism that is killing the sun. Grace’s unique scientific expertise leads him to become an astronaut on a space mission to save all life on our planet. There is a turn in the story where Grace encounters an extra-terrestrial with human-like intelligence; however, the less said about that second-act surprise, the better.

One of the many remarkable aspects of the film’s narrative that I must explore is the structure. The entire storyline is intercut with flashbacks that explain all of the surprising details that led to Ryland Grace being shot up into space. By disregarding a chronological series of plot points, it engrosses the audience from the get-go by having the entire space mission occupy all three acts instead of focusing on the complete “who-what-where-when-why-and-how” before take-off. It would have been asking too much of the audience’s patience to wait until venturing into the great beyond by, let’s say, the one-hour mark–and that’s a conservative estimate!

What is also beneficial about this storytelling strategy is that it allows certain elements of this sort of “prologue” to become surprises–some intellectual, others emotional.

Not to be overlooked is the film’s colorful visuals, inventive production design as well as creature design, and eye-popping and occasionally surrealistic camera angles. 

Ryan Gosling gives one of his best performances, deserving to be spoken of in the same breath as “The Nice Guys”, “La La Land”, and “Blade Runner 2049”. He plays the protagonist with the right balance of heart and snark. He’s no-nonsense, but never cold. Likable, but never sappy. Eccentric, but never off-putting. 

When promoting this movie, the actor himself once said that it’s not the audience’s job to keep movie theaters open, but rather it’s the film industry’s job to make movies that are worth the trip to the cinema.

This is the best film of the year thus far.