The last time we saw Ryan Gosling in space was in 2018, when he starred as Neil Armstrong in Damien Chazelle’s self-serious biographical drama First Man.
From the first moments of Project Hail Mary, adapted from the 2021 novel of the same name by Andy Weir (author of “The Martian”), you’d be forgiven for thinking that viewers we’re signing up for another tough trip into space...
We open with Gosling waking up from an induced coma and unzipping himself from a bio-bag. He’s got long hair, a caveman beard, and absolutely no recollection of who he is. Worse, he doesn't know why he’s in a spacecraft or what his mission is.
He quickly discovers that whatever his assignment is, it has already claimed the lives of two of his colleagues, who both died in hypersleep. And considering he’s 11.9 light years away from Earth, sending a distress message is quite out of the question.
Not the cheeriest of beginnings... But fear not, the Tarkovsky of it all doesn't linger for long. This is a Phil Lord and Christopher Miller space adventure, so goofball comedy is around the corner. If space had corners.
The film then flashes back to Earth, where we learn that Gosling is no astronaut Jason Bourne. He’s Ryland Grace, a mild-mannered doctor in molecular biology who is slumming it as a middle-school science teacher because the academic world just isn't ready to recognise his brilliance.
He’s visited by humourless German official Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), who’s the head of the Hail Mary project. It turns out that a space line has been found linking Venus and the Sun - a galactic thread dubbed the Petrova line.
Ryland gets roped in as a consultant by the multi-government project and quickly discovers that the Petrova line is made up of interstellar micro-organisms gradually devouring the Sun. Luckily, these tiny “space dots” called Astrophage can be used as rocket fuel to power a ship that will send a team to Tau Ceti, a star that seems to be unaffected by space herpes.
The snag is that this extinction-preventing mission is a one-way trip... And in space, no one can hear you crack glib jokes.
A lot works in Project Hail Mary. Plenty of science chat; the flashbacks gradually clue in Ryland – and by extension the audience – on how the hunky prof ended up on the spaceship, preserving a sense of mystery throughout; and Gosling is a reliably charismatic on-screen presence. And then comes the fun, when an alien vessel parks up to his spaceship. This leads to first contact, in the shape of a surprisingly cute alien dubbed ‘Rocky’ - a cross between The Fantastic Four’s Thing and a crab, with added puppy dog energy to spare.
Instead of growing in him, the alien grows on him. After learning how to communicate (a langauge barrier overcome so rapidly that it makes Arrival 's Louise Banks look like a linguistic newbie), Ryland and Rocky decide to team up to save both their worlds, as Rocky’s planet is also threatened by the munching microbes.
Thus begins an odd couple / buddy comedy that feels a million light years away from the film’s opening. For most of the runtime, Lord & Miller make it work as Close Encounters of the Goofy Kind, with plenty of jokes landing and Gosling proving that he can carry an entire film on just his ravishing shoulders.
However, the more the directorial duo leans into the silliness, the more they undercut some of the book’s darker themes. Additionally, the comedic tone threatens to dampen several more emotionally charged moments throughout the bloated 158-minute runtime.
There’s also the issue that the film’s length may lead certain audience members to realise quite to what extent the script by Drew Goddard, who previously adapted Ridley Scott’s The Martian from the novel by Weir, is a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mishmash of previous space greats.
The tone of nostalgic comfort clearly nods towards E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind; the basic premise recalls Silent Running, Sunshine and Interstellar; Ryland being both space-stranded everyman and scientific prodigy feels like he could be related to The Martian ’s leading man Mark Watney; and far less complimentary, the human / multi-limbed-alien two-hander can remind an unlucky few of the dire 2024 Adam Sandler flick Spaceman. It all pieces together in a heart-warming way, but there’s nothing in Project Hail Mary that you won’t have seen before.
Hitting familiar notes is no crime, but when the overlong blend of sci-fi entertainment relegates the great Hüller to another dry Teuton, features two dodgy karaoke sequences and undermines a more serious finale with an afterschool TV special ending, the charm does get corroded – as if a cosmic pathogen was feeling peckish.
What remains is a galactic adventure that works as a handsomely made, old-school crowd-pleaser. It is never not entertaining, but Project Hail Mary needed to feel less derivative in order for the central theme of friendship to truly resonate.
Project Hail Mary is out now.
