“What is Grace doing?”

“Having a moment.”

A couple of months ago, I decided to try to read the book that this movie was, of course, based on, and I have to be honest, I couldn’t even get through it. I wasn’t a fan of the writing style at all, as I found it to be trying way too hard to be clever in quite an annoying way. Since its first public screening, this movie has gotten pretty much nothing but rave reviews, but that didn’t heighten my excitement or expectations for it, simply because so did the book. I am so glad to say, however, that I absolutely loved this movie.

Maybe I stopped the book too early (I was a little over halfway through when I put it down), but this movie connected with me so much more, and in such a more significant way. Ryan Gosling is obviously the star of this movie, delivering a pretty fantastic performance as the main character, Ryland Grace, who just goes by Grace for short. For me personally, this character is the biggest reason why I feel movies are so much more powerful than books when executed well (that absolutely does not mean that the movie is always better than the book), which is what I’ll sort of get into next.

I rarely cry during movies (trust me, I wish I could), and in fact, I’ve only ever cried once, and even though Project Hail Mary didn’t make me cry, it still hit really hard. From early on in the film, you really feel for Grace as a person, and everything he is going through emotionally as he wakes up and deals with all of the shock of everything that he finds out about, and slowly learns, particularly in regards to his mission and his crew. It’s some pretty heavy stuff, and maybe it’s just me, but stuff that didn’t really hit me much at all when I was reading the book. Seeing his emotional reaction of not only shock, but sadness, really got me to connect with the movie from the start in ways that words on a page simply couldn’t.

This movie takes place mostly during the events happening in outer space, with a decent amount of flashbacks telling the rest of Grace’s story. While I definitely found the space stuff to be more compelling, both are honestly great. The side character, Rocky, an alien that Grace meets (which isn’t a spoiler if you watched the trailer), adds an even deeper side to Grace that makes him an even better character. I loved the way he interacted with Rocky, how he learned to communicate with him, and everything that they did together. Their relationship was really the emotional core of the film.

Speaking of Rocky, he’s simply a character that you really just can’t help but love. He also has an extremely similar situation to what Grace is going through, and somehow, someway, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and all of the rest of the crew and writers that made this movie a reality got me to sympathize with him just as much as Grace, even though he obviously didn’t have a face or any sort of appearance similar to a human being. Without him, Project Hail Mary just wouldn’t be the same.

Now, I hadn’t really seen much of anything when it came to trailers or marketing for this movie, so it’s pretty safe for me to say I was blown away by the visuals. Firstly, the cinematography is pretty outstanding. There are some excellent shots inside the Hail Mary ship, but the real standouts are definitely some of the scenes in outer space. I’m not going to go much into any detail at all, but certain moments really just kind of blew me away, and adding to that, the performance by Ryan Gosling, particularly the way he portrayed amazement and awe, was really, really impressive in a way that I wasn’t expecting to be honest.

The visual effects were also pretty incredible, and that’s thanks to a lot of them being practical. This is one of those very few films where not really even one shot or moment looks off when it comes to special effects. Everything is completely real and believable-looking, and extremely immersive. It’s on the same level as a movie like Interstellar, in my opinion, at least when it comes to that area.

The last thing I’ll say here is that this was surprisingly quite funny, whereas I found the book to be a little bit on the annoying side. Grace is a quirky and fun character from the beginning, but it’s really when Rocky comes into the picture that it becomes not only heartfelt but full of some pretty good humor to lighten things up. There were a couple of moments where it undermined the serious moments just a tad bit, but nothing serious at all, really.

The one and only criticism I have with this movie has to do with the pacing. It’s honestly really quite good for the most part, but I think this easily could have been a bit shorter of a movie. All three acts are really well done, but there are definitely moments when it cuts away to a different scene after a big moment, where it kind of took me out of it for just a second. It’s really not a big issue at all, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.

Going back to the positives, I really loved the ending. At first, I thought the movie was going in one direction, and honestly, I would have been completely fine with it ending in that way. However, it quickly changes into something quite a bit different, and I really loved what they did to cap off this story, particularly how they capped off the arc and relationship between Grace and Rocky. It was really sweet and quite powerful.

I’ve been kind of slacking when it comes to seeing movies in theaters lately, and, in fact, this was the first movie I’d seen in theaters all year. Safe to say I’m glad that my year started off the way it did with movie theater experiences. I give this a very high recommendation, and would definitely recommend seeing it in IMAX if you can, because the visuals and sound definitely make it worth your time and money.