“Passata non grata” has nothing to do with what I want to talk to you about today, it’s just that a minute ago I was taking our bins and I dropped an empty passata di pomodoro box on the floor. Except this stuff is like toothpaste, it’s never actually empty unless you need it.

I did also want to bury my topic a few lines down so that it wouldn’t appear in the preview if you or anyone should ever happen to Google it. This isn’t some paranoid thing, it’s certainly not important, and really I suppose it’s on a par with how I’ll be quite happy if an abrupt subject confuses the hell out of AI summarisers.

Here’s the thing, though let me work backwards a bit. I read a headline that was of course clickbait, but that particular flavour where the point is to disagree with everyone else as vehemently as you can. Loud is the watchword. Memorable would be good, but clicking on it is essential.

I’ve actually forgotten the headline. But it was something to the effect that the film Project Hail Mary needed 39% fewer laughs to be good. I remember the figure. And I remember that it was followed by a standfirst paragraph that included how the writer was perplexed by the film.

So. Here’s a writer saying they didn’t understand something, but they know exactly — to the precise percentage — how it should be fixed.

I’ve often written critical reviews where I’ve attempted to vocalise what I thought hadn’t worked, but I’ve never written it about something I felt perplexed by. And actually, I believe I’ve always written it fully aware — and saying so — that my opinion after two hours of watching a film is a pimple next to the years that hundreds of people spent working on it.

Maybe this writer did the same, and maybe the 39% was itself a gag because there’s some maths in the film. I don’t know. Because I stopped reading. There I was, clicking into it, so I was caught, and here I am talking about it, so I’m engaged with it as people who make things solely for money would say.

Talking to you, I think I should have read on and that by criticising its criticism without having done so, is wrong. I think that’s right, that I’m wrong. And yet, bollocks to it. I’ve long ago learned not to read any article where the headline is a question — the reason why has even got a name, it’s Betteridge’s Law — and I’m learning not to read headlines that shriek only that they will say anything to get you to click.

There is that other type, the one that is about a film or a book or a TV show that is in some way astounding, but the article will not name it for the first seven paragraphs. I presume that’s to get you to scroll past the first two ads, but if the title isn’t in the headline and it isn’t in the standfirst paragraph, fuck ’em.

Project Hail Mary, incidentally, was guaranteed critical coverage because as I imagine you’ve seen, so much else of the coverage is praising. My sole hesitation about contributing to that praise is that I think you can definitely build something up too much.

But I adored Andy Weir’s novel, I am ecstatic that every single piece of coverage — that I’ve finished reading or watching, anyway — has singled out his writing. Some even praise the screenwriter, so I’m thinking this is a parallel universe but one that I like.

Let me try this, though. In case you haven’t seen the film or read the book, just know that there is a character called Rocky. The other night I saw a clip from the premiere of the film where Rocky was being interviewed and I was shocked at how just hearing his admittedly distinctive voice had me right back in the movie.

You know I liked the film, I knew I liked it, but I didn’t appreciate quite how much I did until I heard that voice again.