JESUS CHRIST!

I wasted half the afternoon yesterday going to see a crappy film titled Project Hail Mary. Hail Mary indeed or, more appropriately - Holy Shit!

I can't blame The Old Girl even though she kind of liked it as it was my choice. Generally I can't stand those space and Marvel comic films like Star Wars etc. but do rate the great films like Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey and Ridley Scott's Alien which have decent narratives and grown up themes and execution.

For me I'd rather have seriousness on the one hand or complete farce on the other but hate the flippancy that modern film writers and directors think that their audience want ... hold on, they are correct I guess as a 73 year old man who has spent most of his life reading good literature and watching great films certainly isn't numbered amongst their target audience. Mea culpa.

Anyway, I hadn't seen any trailers for the film and had only picked up on a passing comment in the media that it was a 'groundbreaking' film worth seeing. I should have been more circumspect. OK, it had some amazing cinematography and special effects but AI tends to take the 'wow' out of this nowadays. What it also had though was some Quentin Tarantino-type rip-offs from older and better films like the afore-mentioned 2001 A Space Odyssey and Alien along with Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like with Tarantino it's more rip-off than homage.

Also the directors and writers (I don't know about the original novelist) decided to dumb down the 'alien' character and the principal (American of course) character in the way of those crappy TV space 'comedies' like Alf, My Favourite Martian, 3rd Rock from the Sun etc. You know the ones I mean.

Americans always seem to go to the lowest common denominator as they are afraid that their dumb audiences will pan the movie if it's above their heads.

This film (movie to the Americans and adoptees of American culture) is about a last-ditched space mission named Project Hail Mary after the 'Hail Mary' pass in American, to try to save Earth because alien microbes are eating up the sun. Well, with a story-line like that and being about as silly as Robert's Catechism I guess the 'Hail Mary' name is appropriate.
School science teacher Dr Ryland Grace (get the allusion?) wakes up from an induced coma on this spacecraft, with no memory of why he is aboard. The rest of the crew are dead, and Grace must now figure out how he got there and how to rescue humanity.
The whole thing is really silly, although it tries to be serious, and shoots itself in the foot with the dumbing down - making a far superior and advanced alien out as a silly pet using that dumb dialogue that cats and dogs are supposed to use on YouTube videos. I can't be arsed reporting on this garbage to you - go and see it for yourself.

Richard might because he has an appreciation for low brow films and Robert could well be hoodwinked into seeing it because of the title.