There are clichés that critics go back to, and when I realize I’m guilty of overusing one (sometimes once can be too often), I’ll vow never to use it again. Here’s one I did that with: lauding something as “the movie we need right now.” That’s a phrase so cringe I’m ashamed I ever used it. The reason I bring this up is that “Project Hail Mary” is a cosmic adventure that feels diagrammed, if not programmed, to be The Movie We Need Right Now.
It’s a lavishly scaled feel-good environmental outer-space thriller, starring Ryan Gosling as a science geek who is sent many lightyears away to save Earth. So it’s a movie that recalls such…