Finally, I found a show of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary at an earthly hour, all shows being dominated by the ‘D’ film. Providentially, I came away with a backache and not a headache. Audi 2 of Cinepolis in Patna’s PM Mall, with its broken-down seats and poor projection, needs immediate renovation (which I believe is happening, but then why keep the theatre open prior to repair?).
As for Project Hail Mary, I will be honest: I found it a slog, in spite of some highly edifying moments. These, sadly, are too far apart and in between. Most of the film is like a sci-fi class for cocky teenagers who revel in being a part of a secret society of enlightened astrophysicists who know how to decode all the putatively fun stuff on the highly specialized subject.
So, until around mid-narration, we have a science schoolteacher who is roped into to save the world (groan, yes again!) after it comes to light—no pun intended—that the sunlight is dimming. Instead of the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes The Sun’, we have the battles singing ‘Two Of Us’, which is like playing ‘Rasputin’ in Dhurandhar 2 in a scene that has nothing to do with the Russians.
This oddly incongruous selection of songs reminded me of Dhurandhar. (Damn, no getting away from the ‘D’company).
To cut a short story long (that’s what it feels like: a two-liner stretched into 2.5 hours), Ryan Gosling, a charismatic actor of limited skills and resources, plays Ryland Grace, who is plucked from his cosy habitat and propelled into outerspace to save the world(home-‘groan’ cinematic cliché), where Grace meets an alien named Rocky. They are the Jai and Veeru of outer space.
My favourite moment in this trite sci-fiction movie (an Interstellar without any stellar qualities) is when Ryland Grace and Rocky—about to become inseparable buddies—choose a human voice for Rocky.
One of the options that Grace suggests is Meryl Streep’s voice, adding, “She can do anything.”
She can. Sadly, he can’t. Gosling hops from an expression of bemusement to a look of sardonicism. That’s as far as his range takes him. There is no real emotion between the earthling and the alien like there was in Steven Spielberg’s ET or even Rakesh Roshan’s Koi Mil Gaya.
It’s not entirely Gosling’s fault. His co-star, the alien, is shapeless, amorphous, and unrelatable, much like the movie itself, which tries hard to be sassy, funny, and heart-warming and fails, largely, on all three counts.
Fatally, there is very little of Grace’s background: how did he end up being such a target for such an isolating experiment? Grace’s relationship with his immediate boss Eva Strutt (Sandra Hüller), the head of the international task force, has potential. But there is little genuine warmth between them, except when she sings Harry Styles evocative ‘Sign Of The Times’ at a farewell party(farewell, as the world is coming to an end).
At the end of this hopeful journey into outer space to end the end of the world, I was left with a film with no real sense of time, our time, and space, their space.
