Project Hail Mary Review: So Good a Rock Will Make You Cry

We caught the 6:30 p.m. screening and I was surprised that it was already past 9 p.m. when the movie ended. The pace was excellent. The revelation of everything was well spaced apart. There was always something new happening. The use of flashbacks was very well executed for me, and the slow reveal of how everything came to be led to some nice emotional pivots. It was really nice.

Acting masterclass from Ryan Gosling. Give this guy a lifetime achievement award. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. This guy is pretty under the radar, at least for me, but I checked his last few films. La La Land was him (and man, that made me cry). This is the Blade Runner 2049 guy. The Crazy Stupid Love guy. The guy from The Notebook! That’s a vague memory for me (no pun intended), but I remember that movie being great. I’m not such a big fan of his more comedic roles, but I think his comedy chops in this film are just right. This is perfect Ryan Gosling. It thrusts him back into leading man territory.

Sandra Hüller was great in it. Great casting. She had the right amount of sternness and withheld warmness. The interaction between her character and Grace was great. Enough to hint at a mild spark, but not enough to go down that rabbit hole. It was very well done.

Add to the discovery of greatness the directors: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller. Their names may not be familiar, but they are the guys behind the 21 Jump Street reboots, The Lego Movie, the animated Spider-Man Miles Morales reboots, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. They are great at giving direction to animation, but they’re just as effective at giving direction to humans. Which may be no surprise, because the Rocky character gives you so much feels. My short review for the film: so good a rock will make you cry. And it did.

Some people have called out that the voice of Rocky was actually the voice of its puppeteer, James Ortiz, and that added to the warmth in the interaction between Gosling and the animatronic puppet. This movie touts that it had limited green screen and AI and a lot of practical sets. Rocky was real. And I don’t want to go through that debate, but okay, maybe that was able to help. It worked, I guess.

The set designs were really nice. You get a space odyssey vibe, which is a great visual treat especially in 2026. My wife loved the editing & set design. She says the alien ship looked very palpable. The ship design was nice. It was out of this world and a different take on spaceships. Rocky’s species doesn’t have eyes. They don’t have light, but they can hear. They see through vibrations. And the reimagining of the ship according to those rules was very nice.

The action set pieces were really good too. Kept you at the edge of your seat and spaced out (no pun intended) really well.

This story makes me want to read whatever Andy Weir writes next. Because just like the directors, if Andy Weir is not familiar to you, he was the guy who wrote The Martian, which is a top 5 space sci-fi movie. My wife and I ranked the top space sci-fi movies ever, and The Martian and Project Hail Mary are both in there.

All in all, this is a must-see. The pace was excellent. I really didn’t mind the long runtime. Time was made relative (I’ll stop now). Ryan Gosling was quoted saying something to the effect that the onus of reviving theater-watching behavior was not on the audience, it should be on the film creators. Make something that will get people back into theaters. And I think box-office draw will become more and more important in rating the impact and weight of a film.

I am genuinely excited as a film lover that we are seeing more and more original, non-IP blockbusters. A topic I keep raising in our household is breaking that misnomer that there are no more original stories, that all stories have already been told. And though the themes and archetypes repeat, the story itself, the entirety of it, that is unique and can be fresh and original. And this is already another topic, but AI can never do that. (I said it’s another topic, let’s just park that.)

Loved this movie. It is a must-watch. Go see it in theaters!

Her rating: 4.5 / 5

My rating: 4 / 5

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