This film is light years ahead. Merging animation, puppetry, a Harry Styles song, a science teacher and a friendly alien, Ryan Gosling and Directors Lord and Miller use their imagination to reach new heights in space that’s both serious and funny. Gosling is a serious hearthrob, but down to Earth delivering comedy, too.
It took 6 years for this film to be made. Gosling got the script based on the book by Andy Weir (The Martian) at the beginning of COVID and thought, this is so complicated it too hard to be made, period. But when the creative team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Man Into the Spider Verse, Lego Land, 21 and 22 Jump Street), were brought on to direct, they had the cred with success in animation and live action comedy to make it possible and they took the challenge. So did Drew Goddard who wrote the script. No easy task when communication plays such a big part in the characterizations and you’re asking the audience to go along for the ride.
Ryland Grace (Gosling) is not your average Middle School Science Teacher. He had become a laughing stock in the scientific community for his theories on alien life forms. But that’s exactly what drew the attention of Eva Stratt (Sandra Hűller), the head of a task force trying to save the world from an alien life form that was drain energy from the stars, with one exception. Stratt drafts Grace who is space science savvy to go on a mission to find out how to save the world. Only he doesn’t want to go. He’s perfectly happy to be a science teacher. Even Ryan Gosling wasn’t sure he could do the role, but even though Ryan didn’t believe in himself, Hűller believed in him all the way.
All of a sudden, he wakes up in space years later, finding that he’s the only live crew member left. Panic sets in, as he’s alone in space with no recollection of how he got there. His memory is compromised until, little by little, he begins to put the pieces back together remembering a flashback to prior meetings with Stratt’s staff, that includes a Karaoke night. This is where Sarah Hűller shines. After Gosling heard her singing to herself from her dressing room, he insisted she sing in the movie! And Hūller picked the song, “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles and makes it her own.
Grace freaks out having to spend a lot of time alone on this space ship. Once Grace is in space, he has to learn whatever he can to complete the mission. It’s a learning curve he’s very tentative about from the very start.
Gosling was getting pretty lonely for the first 100 days by himself. There was no one to act as a scene partner for the scenes on the ship and he let his directors know. Lord, always equipped with duct tape, pulled out a mop and created Moppy Ringwald for Gosling to happily play off of in the movie until the real alien came on the scene. And that’s when the magic happens.
Miller and Lord worked with award-winning puppeteer and voice actor, James Ortiz to create Rocky, a five-legged spider-like, non-humanoid life form and he’s also the voice of the clunky alien. They had no way of communicating and frustrated, Grace uses his computer tech-spertise to devise a translator that enables communication. Their conversations from then on surprise as they develop a friendship and Miller and Lord make this character endearingly irresistible. It is Miller and Lord’ s ingenious imagination that created Rocky for this adventure.
Project Hail Mary! may show up on Best Movie lists being compared with ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At more than 2 and half hours, Miller and Lord play the long game, but Gosling with Rocky make this fun other worldy buddy film, a touchdown.
Amazon MGM Studios 2 hours 36 minutes PG-13
