One of my first thoughts when I finished watching this movie is that I need to watch “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” again. The reason I thought that is because like that movie – and like the “Alf” TV series, Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) from “The Mandalorian” streaming series, and others – a good chunk of this movie is making the audience care about “Rocky”, the name of the alien that Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) meets on his space mission.
The movie starts with Ryland Grace waking up for a medically induced coma. He slowly discovers that he’s on a spaceship, the other people on the spaceship are dead, and he’s light years away from Earth. Through a series of flashbacks throughout the movie (I’m not sure if he remembers the flashbacks or they’re just the backstory for the audience) it’s explained why and how Ryland ended up on the spaceship. There’s some type of substance that’s slowly killing the sun which means that Earth will also be destroyed. He was sent to another sun to find out why this sun isn’t being killed.
After he figures out where he is, why he’s there, and how to create gravity on the ship (so they didn’t have to film him floating around for the whole movie), he starts to work on the mission. Suddenly, another much bigger spaceship appears right next to his ship. The new ship is determined to contact him. He moves his ship and the other ship moves the same way.
There is a very long sequence where Ryland Grace and the alien on the other ship figure out how to contact each other, meet each other (although each of their atmospheres are different), and create a way to communicate. Ryland names the alien “Rocky” because the alien looks sort of like a crab made of rocks. There’s even a scene where they pick out a computer voice for Rocky.
Ryland learns that Rocky’s home planet is having the same problem that Earth is having. So, they decide to work together to save both their worlds.
This movie is based on a book by Andy Weir, who also wrote “The Martian” which was about a man alone in space on a planet (this movie actually copied a couple ideas from that movie). This time the man starts out alone but soon has an alien helping him. I’m not sure if it’s the same in the book, but one of the big themes in the movie is friendship. Ryland first makes friends with Carl (Lionel Boyce) who is supposed to watch him while he works in a laboratory. Then Ryland makes friends with Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) who oversees the whole mission into space. Then Ryland makes friends with the alien Rocky (who was mostly a puppet and only a little bit CGI from what I understand).
In my opinion, that’s the worst part of the movie. The first friendship is funny. The second friendship is a little too emotional. The friendship with Rocky becomes melodramatic in places. I’m not a fan of melodrama. There are scenes where I’m sure a lot of people who saw this have (or will) cry. I didn’t cry (I also didn’t cry at the end of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”)
The runtime of the movie is a little over 2.5 hours. I think a lot of the scenes in the middle – especially the scenes of Ryland trying to communicate with the other spaceship which I believe goes for about 20 minutes – could have easily been cut. It could have been replaced by a few holes in the plotline. How did the other people on the ship get killed is never explained. How Ryland knows how to control almost everything in the ship isn’t really explained (Ryland and Rocky even manage to watch the movie “Rocky” on some video sceens on the ship).
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie. I liked a lot of the friendship scenes and the other scenes of the movie where they’re figuring things out are good. Some scenes are funny, some are interesting, some are exciting. I just don’t think this movie is great because of the scenes I didn’t like. I almost groaned at one melodramatic scene.
You may cry during some scenes towards the end of the movie, but even if you don’t cry the movie is very entertaining.
Overall – 7 out of 10.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 