‘Project Hail Mary’ Review: Ryan Gosling is Stuck Between a Rocky and a Hard Place in Crowdpleasing Sci-Fi Buddy Movie Adventure [A-]

Hollywood hasn’t had a creative muse like Andy Weir in quite some time. Though not nearly as prolific, his combination of hard-science technical detailing imprinted onto hooky sci-fi concepts custom-built for big-budget film adaptations recalls the illustrious career of Michael Crichton. Weir has a long road ahead before producing source material that yields an adaptation as iconic as Jurassic Park (though, let’s not forget the plethora of terrible Crichton adaptations otherwise). Still, the film of his 2021 novel “Project Hail Mary” proves him a worthy successor to the mass-market giant — sturdy proof of the ongoing potential of original sci-fi literature making it to the silver screen.

That idea is contingent on Weir’s indulgences as an author continuing to be softened by experienced filmmakers and screenwriters with good instincts. This was the case for the Ridley Scott-directed, Drew Goddard-written adaptation of his novel “The Martian,” which translated a style of relentless techno-babble into a gratifying exploration of scientific ingenuity and human tenacity. Goddard returns for Project Hail Mary, now teamed with directing duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller, pop-cinema wunderkinds returning with their first film in over a decade, after Disney told them to blast off during production of a movie about a different adventure among the stars.

Together, this filmmaking team makes Project Hail Mary a crowd-pleaser to behold, streamlining the novel’s sprawling narrative to focus on its most successful components — namely, the lost-in-space buddy-movie dynamic. The man adrift in the cosmos is Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), who wakes up on his ship in a different solar system, alone with the bodies of two dead crew members and no memory of how he got there. Those details are filled in through the film’s interspersed flashback structure. Ryland was a middle school science teacher on Earth, approached by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), the lead of a special government task force assembled to address an existential threat: the Earth’s sun is dying. Eva believes Ryland has the skills to help, given his knotty history within the professional scientific community, which dismissed him for experimental ideas that challenged the foundational understanding of how life endures.

This structure is the worst holdover from the novel, a clunky deployment of story details that the script adheres to in order to keep certain developments in Ryland’s situation hidden. It often hinders the pace of the story’s real meat: Ryland’s adjustments to his life alone on the ship are disrupted by a fellow spacefarer. Out in the expanse, he encounters a ship far larger than his own, housing an entity that quickly proves itself benevolent, and who we learn has embarked on the same mission. Ryland dubs him Rocky — he’s a spider-like organism, seemingly made of stone, faceless, and able to communicate only through sing-song tonal resonances. The two become best friends.

It’s an idiosyncratic layer to add to a story otherwise devoted to precise scientific detail — what if Matt Damon in The Martian actually just had some aliens on Mars to help him out? Though Weir didn’t shy away from Ryland and Rocky’s relationship being the emotional focal point of the novel, the movie makes it the entire draw. Goddard’s script cuts all but the bare necessities needed for the audience to understand the mechanics of the mysterious phenomenon killing the sun, far more interested in how that premise allows Ryland and Rocky to bond over their high-stakes adventure.

This is the right move. Though the extended passages of technical specification in Weir’s book make for a distinctive read, how they would realistically translate to film is dubious. Also perceptive is Goddard’s choice to eliminate some of the more grating forms of humor in Weir’s writing. Ryland has an exasperating voice in the novel, constantly falling back on the tropes of self-aware geek witticisms and more purely cringeworthy character details. I’m happy to report that the Ryland of the film does not spend the whole movie replacing the word “fuck” with alternatives like “fiddlesticks.” Instead, the film is carried along by the breezy, lightly affected voice of genre pastiche that Goddard brings — the sensibility of a writer whose other credits include The Cabin in the Woods and Bad Times at the El Royale. Some may find it a little too cute in that reliably quippy Goddard way, but most will likely take to the lighthearted friendship that develops between the two protagonists.

That said, Project Hail Mary likely falls apart if it’s anyone but Gosling as the lead. With his boyish warmth and consummate gift for physical comedy, he’s the ideal performer to watch flailing around the zero-gravity interiors of a ship he doesn’t know how to operate, or struggling in montage to develop a shared language with his new alien friend. When the going gets tough later in the film, it’s an actor like Gosling who has the chops to shift from the lighthearted to the catastrophic and make both registers feel genuine, which matters more in this context than convincingly conveying the full depths of his character’s intellectual acumen. The movie expects us to trust that Gosling is the right man for the job, because the real emphasis is elsewhere.

Other performers fill their roles well, though as far as humans go, it’s really only Hüller who has a substantial presence to contribute to the ensemble. The real co-star, of course, is Rocky himself, a spectacular VFX creation. There’s no reason to doubt the directors when they say Gosling was rarely alone on set when sharing the frame with his alien friend, so credible is his relationship to the physical puppet built by Neal Scanlan and operated by James Ortiz. The combination of puppetry and meticulous sound and dialogue editing allows Ryland and Rocky to develop their close-knit friendship through banter and convincing physicality. To turn this completely expressionless entity into a lovable cinematic sidekick is a remarkable achievement. It is no exaggeration to say that this movie makes you fall in love with a rock.

Project Hail Mary doesn’t slouch on the rest of its special effects or production design either. With contributions from visual effects companies including Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and others, Lord and Miller are working with a vast array of long-tenured movie-magic talent to bring this interstellar quest to life. Between the tangible, well-realized sets that make up Ryland’s ship and the marvelous integration of practical and digital effects in his spacewalks, the film puts every dollar on screen. The more action-oriented set pieces aren’t the most memorable you’ll have seen in space-set sci-fi, but there’s no denying the impressive nature of all its interlocking ingredients.

For their part, Lord and Miller are assured chaperones of all the disparate elements of design, both on Earth and in space. The pair know the kind of movie Project Hail Mary is meant to be — a pop blockbuster with an earnest approach, lovable characters, and formidable stakes — and pull it off with fluency, the work of directors who know their craft even at this expansive scale. They channel their giddy sense of spectacle in service of a story about the curious and enterprising human spirit, making it an encouraging watch in a contemporary political culture that dismisses scientific research. It may not be the next generational sci-fi classic, but Project Hail Mary will energize anyone desperate for studio blockbusters that revere something often lost in our biggest movies: the fundamental art of moviemaking.

Grade: A-

Amazon MGM Studios will release Project Hail Mary only in theaters and IMAX on March 20.