PROJECT HAIL MARY

or Jeff, Keep Your Day Job

PROJECT HAIL MARY has the usual scifi premise: Earth will be destroyed unless we save it.

It begins as so many movies and TV shows begin today - in the middle.

Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakes in a space ship. He doesn't know why he is there nor where he is going. The first fifteen minutes or so - time slows down when you are bored - is spent watching Grace-Gosling stumble and fall while the camera shows us bits and pieces of the space ship and we, the audience, along with Grace-Gosling, have no idea what is going on. Maybe the directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and writer, Drew Goddard, wanted it that way so the audience would feel what Grace-Gosling is feeling. Lost.

Eventually, we find out that Earth is being destroyed by some strange cell-like creatures that eat suns including our Sun. Over the next century, Earth will slowly die as its sole source of unlimited energy gets eaten.

Grace-Gosling is a middle school science teacher who is vital to learning how to destroy the sun-eaters. Why is he so important? Because he is, that's why. To do this he must travel to a distant world to bring back bacteria that destroy the alien cells. It isn't really a spoiler to reveal that he succeeds.

It is a spoiler to tell you that midway through the 2.5 hour movie, the genre changes and it becomes a buddy movie. Grace-Gosling meets an alien who is also traveling to the distant world for the same reason.

There are lots of lights and CGI scenes and lots of that strange loud electronic music with loud high-pitched voices ooooing and ahhhhing. Visually, nothing makes sense so why should the music? There is a famous Beatles song thrown in along the way - can you guess? Remember, it turns into a buddy movie.

Grace-Gosling cries at least five times - I stopped counting - and that tells you all you need to know. I mean, five times! And he is single with no family or friends - until he meets his buddy.

So what is this Amazon movie? A CGI-heavy scifi-ish, tear-jerker, alien-buddy, travel-adventure earth-extinction movie. Sort of CastAway meets E.T. meets 2001 meets Chaplain's The Kid. just nowhere as good as any of those movies.

If it were 1.5 hours long, if they told the story from the beginning, if they concentrated on the science more, if they had a better musical score - well, this could have been a nice, simple mediocre movie. Instead. It's a long, boring, see-every-twist-and-turn-a-mile-away mess of a movie.

If this is the best Amazon can do, Jeff keep your day job.