.
On paper this should be bleak, but directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse ) play it for laughs the whole way, packing it densely (perhaps too densely) with slapstick and comedic dialogue that really take the edge off.
Its true shape comes into relief as Grace encounters Rocky, an extraterrestrial in the exact same predicament he’s in, and a friendship blossoms as the pair try to save their homeworlds together.
We spend the bulk of the film watching Gosling trading banter with a part-puppet, part-computer-generated rock creature with no face. It’s pretty compelling for the most part, darn-right heartwarming when it needs to be, and just occasionally a bit too close to saccharin. Fair warning to those with an aversion to quippy banter: you may find it cloying at points.
But Gosling, here, proves why he’s a star. It’s not a role that really stretches his skills and he’s unlikely to win awards. It’s more a demonstration that turning a camera at him more-or-less gets you half way to a film.
He’s utterly magnetic, even when he’s not doing a lot as the nerdy and panicky Grace, and manages to convey chemistry with a puppet for huge chunks of the runtime. He pulls off a solid cry or two when called upon.
Project Hail Mary is adapted from the 2021 novel by Andy Weir, best known for his Mars survival story The Martian . Weir’s books, at times, read like technical manuals on physics, chemistry and biology, as their scientist heroes science their way through seemingly impossible odds.
The adaptation, written by Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, Bad Times at the El Royale ), deftly pares back the details, while still clinging onto that satisfying feeling of watching someone smart think their way through problems.
It also manages to get impressive clarity out of a story that throws a new idea in every few minutes. At longer than two-and-a-half hours, it should feel relentless, but mostly flies past.
It helps that from its opening frames, Project Hail Mary ‘s reported $US248 million budget is evident on the screen.
Cinematographer Greig Fraser works the same magic he did on Dune, Rogue One and The Batman . The sets are impressively tactile, taking queues from some of the all-time sci-fi greats. Rocky is designed and shot with surprisingly effective simplicity. The action is tight and clear, even as it explodes into nebulas of CG effects.
None of this is particularly original, but it pulls off the trick of showing you the impossible and making you forget it’s not real.
Meanwhile, Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest ) – as the brutally pragmatic leader of Earth’s coordinated efforts to stop the apocalypse – is the other secret ingredient. Both devastatingly funny and terrifying in her dead-pan deliveries, she steals scenes from Gosling, and forms the film’s earnest, emotional spine.
And it’s this core that Project Hail Mary ‘s jokey, family-friendly, big-budget hull is delivery mechanism for.
This is a blockbuster with no bad guys, no guns, no violence.
It’s a tale not of rugged individuals, but pretty ordinary people being a bit smart, a bit brave and, most importantly, recognising that cooperation and trust are the closest thing we have to hope.
Project Hail Mary asks us to believe; not in aliens, not in futuristic technology, and not in Ryan Gosling, but the idea that if we put our heads together, we might just be able to save ourselves.
Boris Jancic is a member of RNZ’s digital team and reviews films.
