Project Hail Mary is a film based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Andy Weir, best-known for The Martian (also made into a successful movie). Both stories have a similar premise, stranding a handsome Hollywood leading man (first Matt Damon and now Ryan Gosling) an ungodly distance from home with limited or non-existent chances of rescue. Project Hail Mary is far less concerned with actual science though, with the threat to Earth, the interstellar propulsion system and the resolution to the crisis all being way more speculative than anything in The Martian. This gives the story more leeway to focus on the characters and having a little bit more fun.
This makes sense as the directors are the duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, remarkably here directing their first movie together in a dozen years. In the meantime they had started work on Solo: A Star Wars Story, only to be removed from the project mid-film and replaced by Ron Howard. Project Hail Mary serves as a calling card to show that yes, they can handle a more serious tone and also an effects-heavy SF movie, and do it well.
It's probably not a massive spoiler to say that Gosling's character is not alone for long, as it turns out other extraterrestrial civilisations are also under threat from the "astrophage" and the guys at 40 Eridani have also figured out that Tau Ceti may have hold the secret to defeating them so send a team of their own. Grace has to join forces with an alien named "Rocky" and learn his language as a prelude to finding a solution to the problem.
In order to overcome the limitation of 90% of the film being made up of Gosling talking to an ambulatory rock, the film also features elaborate flashbacks to the discovery of the astrophage, Grace training the scientists to fix the problem and then being asked to replace them when they are killed in an accident. This non-linear approach to the storytelling works quite well, even if it does add to the feeling this movie is "Interstellar with a few more laughs," (not a bad thing at all). Key to the flashbacks is Grace's relationship with his boss Eva Stratt (a phenomenal Sandra Hüller) which goes in directions the viewer wasn't quite expecting.
But it is the relationship between Grace and Rocky (voiced with skill by James Ortiz, who also "plays" the puppet version of the character) that is core to the movie, and that relationship is very well-written and excellently played, with the duo rapidly becoming one of SF's more impressive bromances, maybe not quite Han and Chewie, but more on the lines of Bruce Dern and his robots in Silent Running. In fact, the film feels like the perfect melding of a 1970s classic slice of sci-fi with a more modern twist.
The film falters a little with its running time, which feels a little overwrought, and with the film under-explaining a few concepts, like how the 40 Eridanians have no concept of relativity, explaining why Rocky's ship is so over-fuelled (a concept better acknowledged in the novel) for the voyage, which becomes a key plot point in explaining how they can move around the Tau Ceti system without worrying too much about fuel.
These complaints are next to negligible though. Project Hail Mary (****½) is an all-around, well-made, well-conceived film which mixes a serious plot with some lighter moments and is driven by superb performances as well as exemplary visual effects. The movie is available to watch worldwide now.
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