'Project Hail Mary' Review: A Stunning Friendship Saga Straight From The Heart

Ryan Gosling charms in this heartfelt space movie that actually gets its message right.

Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Dynamic duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller return to live-action filmmaking after years of giving us some of the most crowd-pleasing animation storytelling in recent memory.

You can clearly see the animation-filmmaking fingerprints from the producers, co-writers, and creative engines behind both the Spider-Verse films and Netflix’s terrific The Mitchells Vs The Machines all over the utterly delightful new space saga—Project Hail Mary.

Thematically, it’s a familiar territory. A lone astronaut is stuck in space during a decade-long mission to investigate compounds from a distant star system to help save a dying planet, Earth.

Think Interstellar meets Arrival meets The Martian (which is itself based on a book by Andy Weir, whose 2021 book Project Hail Mary this film is adapted from).

It’s hardly surprising that in the modern age, “space movies” and travelling to distant planets must be motivated by needing to save our dying world as compared to the “good old days“ where exploration and discovery alone was the mission. But it's Lord and Miller’s treatment and light-footed-zanines-meets-achingly-sincere tonality that makes Project Hail Mary lift off and feel distinctive and refreshing—as among the best times you’ll have at the movies this year.

A Great Time At The Movies

Meet Professor Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling, as impossibly charming as ever). After his dissertation about the scientific community’s incorrect understanding of physics (the science-iness in this movie gets real blurry real fast) ruffled too many feathers, Grace was forced to accept life as a goofy middle-school science teacher when a new global threat forces him back on the frontlines of scientific discovery.

Strange new particles called the Astrophage are eating our sun, and stars around the universe are dying. At the current rate of decay, life on Earth only has a few decades left.

Ryan Gosling as Professor Ryland Grace.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

Given the specific nature of his research, Grace is tracked down by an agency representing the governments of the world to help save the day.

The global body is led by Eva Stratt (played by a terrific Sandra Hüller, who brings heft and weight to what could easily have been a one-dimensional character).

After months of research, the group surmises that Earth’s best hope is to send a team to the distant star of Tau Ceti to investigate why it’s not dying like the stars around it, and whether the key to the human race’s survival can be found there.

A Delightful Buddy Cop Adventure

Project Hail Mary flits back and forth between past and present. The present shows Grace waking up aboard the ship travelling through space, after years in an induced coma, only to find that he’s the last surviving member of his crew, whilst flashbacks take us back to how he got involved in the mission.

How did an apparently cowardly, indifferent school teacher, who would rather stay seated instead of rise to any occasion, become a world-saving badass astronaut? It’s a fun idea, but it’s also the film’s biggest misstep.

Aside from one particular bout of cowardice, Grace is too capable, too smart, and too likeable from the get go for us to think he’s anything other than save-the-day selfless.

Sandra Hüller as Eva Stratt.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

The film isn’t able to sell a sense of transformation in the character. We rarely see Grace struggle. Lord and Miller aren’t quite able to sell his everyman-ness, partly because of Ryan Gosling's star aura.

Thankfully, Grace finding his courage is only a small part of the film. Project Hail Mary, at its core, is a touching friendship saga straight from the heart.

When Grace’s ship finally arrives at Tau Ceti, he comes across a strange object. It’s an alien ship. Like him, aboard it is a scientist and sole survivor of his crew, from a species called the Eridians. Just like Grace, it has travelled to Tau Ceti to try and save his homeworld from the same epidemic facing planet Earth. First contact is made and, of course, the alien is adorbz. After they find a means of communication, Grace names him Rocky because he’s essentially a rock-like creature with limbs.

The two form a huggable friendship and must work together to save both worlds. Delightfully voiced by James Ortiz, Rocky is unsurprisingly the beating heart of the film.

It’s also interesting that, in an age of shamelessly fluffy, manipulative CGI creatures designed with the sole aim of selling toys (think of every Star Wars film of the last decade), Rocky isn’t designed to look like a generic, cutesy CGI blob. There’s a thoughtfulness and specificity to his structure that ensures he burrows into your subconscious.

Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube)

With this film, Lord and Miller have also seriously upped their craft game. Nothing in their live-action career (21 Jump Street, AppleTV’s The Afterparty) comes close to how stunningly crafted Project Hail Mary is. It’s as if every department was firing on all cylinders, working tirelessly to ensure the film looks, sounds, and feels like anything but another generic studio blockbuster. Cinematographer Greig Fraser’s grand visuals give the narrative an emotional weight, as do sound designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn’s stunning soundscape.

But the true MVP of Project Hail Mary is Daniel Pemberton’s score, which captures the entire spectrum of human emotion, from the playful and cheeky to the heavy and heart-wrenching.

And therein lies arguably the greatest strength of this filmmaker duo. It’s not just the immensely satisfying emotional and visual experience they’re able to conjure, but the Pixar-esque easy leaps they’re able to take from humour and delightful silliness to deeply affecting emotion. It’s their ability to balance whimsy and wonder, loneliness and connection, pain and joy, and tragedy and comedy.

The eager-to-please laugh-a-minute grammar in the early stretches of the film may be mildly tiring to some—like Grace contending with how deeply unserious space and zero gravity are (what do you mean we’re just floating on each other?), or Grace and Rocky's lovable communication clashes. But, again, it’s impressive that, for the most part, the consistent jokiness doesn’t take away from the weight of the stakes and the life-threatening mission the pair have in front of them.

That, in 2026, we get an auteur-backed studio blockbuster bursting with playfulness and personality, adventurous bigness and life-affirming intimacy, and that, above all, isn’t hailing from yet another bloated franchise, is a small miracle. I walked away with a smile on my face and feeling hopeful for the movies. 

Project Hail Mary releases in theatres on 27 March.