"Project Hail Mary" Review: Ryan Gosling and an Alien's Surprising Friendship

Imagine HAL 9000 and Dave being best friends in '2001: A Space Odyssey,' and you'll have a good idea of what kind of film 'Project Hail Mary' is. Largely set in space and built around the two-hander between Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and an alien he names "Rocky," the film is the latest adaptation of an Andy Weir novel. As with Weir's 'The Martian' in 2015, the screenplay is once again written by Drew Goddard — a clever, well-constructed script. Christopher Miller and Phil Lord are in the director's chair for the first time since 2014's '22 Jump Street.'

Weir's 2021 sci-fi novel is beloved by fans. But even having read the book, I don't think I could have pictured these grand images spread across an IMAX 70mm screen, or imagined Daniel Pemberton's striking score. Nor could I have guessed what Rocky would look like: in an era when CGI dominates everything, I never would have predicted he'd be partly brought to life with a puppet.

The film flows like a thoroughly satisfying "beach read"; the pacing is deliberately kept calm as our hero tries to figure out what's happened to him back on — or rather, beyond — Earth. Strategic flashbacks reveal how Grace, a high school science teacher, ended up in space on a mission to save humanity. Grace wakes up on a ship, realizes the star he's looking at isn't in our solar system, and learns from the ship's computer that the pilot and other passengers have died.

The mission is to send humans on a one-way trip into deep space to find a cure for a kind of alien virus eating the Sun. A "Petrova line" has formed stretching from Venus to the Sun, "space specks" gnawing away at it. The same fate awaits other galaxies too; but there's one star that appears immune, and Grace's ship is headed there. Rocky is on a similar mission to save his own planet. The pair's encounter isn't a "meet cute" so much as a "meet curious": at first they watch each other and retreat in fear. Once Grace finds a way to communicate and builds a translation library, the film blossoms into a successful buddy comedy, a variation on 'The Odd Couple' with Grace as Felix and Rocky as Oscar. Gosling is extraordinary opposite a non-human co-star: he's the one who convinces us this relationship is both solid and complex enough to feel joy and sorrow.

The Earthbound flashback scenes give us the cool-headed government agent Eva Stratt (a flawless Sandra Hüller) and her team of scientists. Grace starts out a reluctant participant; Stratt is the only one who believed the theories that got him fired from his old job. Like the space scenes, these sections focus on process: a series of experiments and questions, some answered, some not. The film recalls an era of cinema that trusted the audience's intelligence and attention span.

That doesn't mean Lord and Miller have made a heavy film. Everything you'd expect from a space movie is here, from gravity problems to tense spacewalks and explosions; the effects are first-rate and look great on the big screen (especially in 70mm). But beyond all that spectacle, 'Project Hail Mary' is an unexpectedly moving, bittersweet character study as the credits roll: a pas de deux between human and alien.

Directors: Christopher Miller, Phil Lord. Screenplay: Drew Goddard (based on the novel by Andy Weir). Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz. 156 minutes. PG-13.

Source: The Boston Globe