Amazon Studios has gone a long time in the desert without a hit movie.
Conan O’Brien even made a joke about it on the Oscars on Sunday.
So “Project Hail Mary” means a lot to them. The company will try to erase the bad taste left behind by “Melania,” a $75 million pork barrel that lost all of its money.
Yesterday I wrote that “Melania” had fallen to number 30 on the Amazon list of films and TV shows.
Today, it magically popped up at number 10. Amazing. I guess there was a sudden demand to watch the First Lady’s infomercial.
Almost all reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes like “Project Hail Mary” even though it’s supposedly very similar to Ridley Scott’s “The Martian” — because it’s adapted from a novel by the same writer — and has echoes of Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.” Another ingredient is a character that has reminded some peope of Wilson, the volleyball, from “Cast Away.”
“Project Hail Mary” would have 100% on Rotten Tomatoes if not one for main reviewer, Justin Chang, from the New Yorker. He really hated it. You can read his review here.
Chang says: “’Project Hail Mary’ is the most exasperatingly insistent crowd-pleaser I’ve seen in a while. It serves up an elaborate science-fiction plot in easily digestible bites, often with a juicy one-liner or a side order of pratfall…the audience’s good will is a precious, unstable resource, and the flippancy of “Project Hail Mary” expends it recklessly.”
“Project Hail Mary” is long, by the way. It’s either two hours and thirty six, or forty five minutes.
I’ll see it tomorrow, in a theater, with an audience, and report back.
