“Project Hail Mary” follows Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), a science teacher who wakes up on a spaceship light-years from home with no memory of who he is or how he got there. As his mind slowly reassembles itself through flashbacks, the scope of the stakes becomes clear. Thousands of micro-organisms are draining the sun, and other Grace has been sent to Tau Ceti, the one star in the galaxy seemingly immune to this extinction-level threat, to figure out why. Grace is humanity’s long shot of survival. It’s Hail Mary.
It is, in other words, a lot. What follows is an amazing, emotional interstellar journey.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller are directors who have always been more interested in sincerity than irony, which is part of why they’ve thrived in animation and why they pull off something that actually works. The movie could clearly have collapsed under the weight of its own premise, but Lord and Miller, as well as screenwriter Drew Goddard, miraculously steer clear of that. Like “The Martian,” “Project Hail Mary” is witty, wise, and preposterously entertaining, without ever biting off more than it can chew. It takes a sprawling sci-fi epic of a novel (written by the brilliant Andy Weir) and condenses it and makes it understandable for an audience to follow.
Gosling anchors the emotional heart of the film with the kind of physical and emotional precision that tends to get underappreciated in crowd-pleasers. He’s genuinely funny in the early amnesiac sequences. He plays the part of a sheepish and bewildered man who has no idea where he is or how he got to a solar system 12 light-years away from Earth. When his unlikely co-protagonist eventually arrives — a spider-like alien named Rocky whose planet is dying too — the two instantly hit it off. The rapport between them is the heart of the film, and it is, improbably, completely earned.
Rocky is brought to life through exceptional puppetry and voice work by James Ortiz. The film’s insistence on practical effects wherever possible pays enormous dividends. Rocky does not feel like a special effect; he feels like a character, despite being a big spider alien. It seems like Gosling is actually interacting and having emotional moments with another character, partially because he is.
Goddard, who also adapted “The Martian” for Ridley Scott, seamlessly integrates flashbacks and memory sequences.
What could have been a narrative burden (Grace’s amnesia as a plot device to dole out exposition to the narrator) becomes something more genuinely affecting. Rather than waiting for the movie to catch up, you’re piecing it together alongside him.
The film combines all the good parts of the acclaimed space sci-fi movies of the 2010s, “Gravity,” “Interstellar,” “The Martian,” and blends them, along with a dash of physical and spoken comedy. The product manages to feel like its own thing rather than a synthesis of its influences. That’s harder than it sounds.
Charles Wood’s production design, Greig Fraser’s cinematography and the film’s extensive visual effects make the universe of “Project Hail Mary” tactile, immersive and believable in ways that must be seen to be truly believed.
Lord and Miller have always been filmmakers whose instinct is toward joy, with previous films like “The Lego Movie” and “Into the Spider-Verse” showcasing their positive feelings towards the human spirit. What “Project Hail Mary” reveals is that their instinct toward genuine feeling runs just as deep. This is a film that earns its payoff and delivers it with more grace than the genre usually manages.
The Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls it a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart, and that’s not wrong. It’s also a film that asks whether curiosity and collaboration might be more durable than any other human trait we’ve got.
Go see it on the biggest screen you can find.