Project Hail Mary isn’t a bad movie. It is clearly well done — quality technology creating the splendor of outer space, an interesting but flawed character, and an actor (Ryan Gosling) who winningly captures this character. But it doesn’t work for me.

I will confess it isn’t my type of movie to begin with — a Sci Fi movie with a lot of action moving the plot along. The sun is being eaten away by some mysterious microbe and someone has to go on a suicide mission to figure out why. Will they make it on time? So even though I wouldn’t normally go to this type of movie, I saw some potential there.

The main problem I have is there just isn’t enough plot and/or action to keep this movie going for the 2 and 1/2 hours plus running time of the movie. But what are directors (there are two of them — Phil Lord and Christoper Miller) to do when they have all this fabulous technology that can recreate outer space? They show it with way too many minutes of blaring choral music of Grace looking with awe. I get it. Yes, it is awesome but repetition makes it a little less so. It began to bore me after about the mid-point of the movie.

This boredom lead to me picking apart the plot. Most movies depend on suspending a certain amount of disbelief. A movie about spacecraft in outer space and meeting with aliens then would require much more than the normal movie. Keep the damn thing moving or else you will lose your audience. So, as I was plodding through these beautiful shots of space, I used this time to find plot holes.

Like how the hell was Rocky (the alien our lead character, Grace, encounters in his trip) is Grace going to reconnect with Rocky in the vast expanse of space when they have no communication after Grace departs for earth. Or, given the time needed to save the earth and the time Grace needs to get where he needs to go and his own inability to make it back, how is their enough time for him to save Earth. There was a very short time frame to work with.

Now normally these are not big issues in a movie that is moving along because you are paying attention to what is happening on screen but it is the death knell for movies when you start thinking about them in the middle of the movie you are watching because it means you are no longer watching the movie.

So while Project Hail Mary is in no way a bad movie, it just isn’t a great movie either.