It was so much sillier than I imagined. I almost want to call it a comedy-drama, which feels like an insult for a movie so devoted to its science and its sentimentality; but it routinely chose humor over gravitas, largely destroying the wonder of the space movie. I like for Ryan Gosling roles to show that he's a goofball, but I like it as a respite from the heaviness (Cianfrance, Refn, even Lars and the Real Girl), not as though he's an actual comedic actor. I mean, he plays it well enough, but it doesn't actualize him. Project Hail Mary feels like a promising movie to actualize him, but it's really just way too silly. It's occasionally funny, and a few of the best jokes would be precious if there were only a few of them, but it incessantly interrupts otherwise interesting scenes.
On the same wavelength of being too ultra-consumable, it was cheaply sentimental. His friendship with the alien is outrageous, murdering whatever sincerity the scientific fidelity offered. This is what hurt Interstellar as well - how do you do a far better job making astrophysics authentic than making normal human dialogue authentic? The obvious answer is we can't validate the astrophysics as well as we can the dialogue, but I think there's a deeper incompetence rampant in screenwriting. I'm seeing The Odyssey today - gods, I hope Nolan has figured that out long enough for three hours.
I hate when writers assume aliens are roughly the size and shape and constitution as humans... unless it's intended to be ridiculous. There was awe in the atmosphere leading up to the encounter in Project Hail Mary... which evaporated as soon as we saw the ridiculous alien which roughly looks and thinks like a human. Not just any human, but a sappy pal human. It's like a Disney movie. It's like WALL-E. I expected better from a book that I heard was scientifically authentic; that quality ended abruptly at the alien encounter.
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