I don’t think Ryan Gosling was ever really on my acting radar until he was in The Nice Guys with Russell Crowe. I loved that movie. Everything about it was ridiculous in the best way possible. I mean, I enjoyed a lot of his other films before that (Drive and Crazy, Stupid, Love were really good), but I was never the first in line to see anything he was in.
However, looking at the last couple of films he’s made, from Barbie to The Fall Guy, I’ve walked out of the theater even more impressed than when I walked in. His new film, Project Hail Mary (based on the novel by Andy Weir), keeps that tradition alive.
Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller and written by Drew Goddard, the film stars Gosling as Ryland Grace, a middle-school science teacher who gets recruited… or kind of kidnapped, depending on how you look at it, to help with a massive international crisis. It seems an alien life form has started to feed on the sun, and if nothing is done to eradicate them, the world will descend into complete chaos. Think dogs and cats living together kind of stuff.
It turns out that years before his teaching career began, Grace was a professor who proposed some theories his colleagues thought were nuts. But the government, knowing everything and anything, found those papers and deemed them right up their alley. Grace soon figures out how the life forms procreate, and the team uses that knowledge to develop a new type of fuel capable of sending a spaceship light-years away to save the world.
The lead agent behind all of this, Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), knows exactly how to push his buttons and eventually convinces him—or again, kidnaps him—that he’s one of the only people who can go on the ship and help save humanity. Sure, it’s basically a suicide mission, but hey, he’s got nothing else going on, she says more or less.
The film is told partly through flashbacks. Whenever something important happens in space, the story jumps back to Earth to show how Grace got recruited and how they tried to solve the alien mystery.
Back in space, he encounters Rocky, an alien life form that looks like a hermit crab mated with a rock. Grace eventually devises a way for them to communicate through his laptop, giving Rocky a human voice. We soon find out Rocky’s planet sent him on a similar mission to save his own world.
They join forces to save not only Earth, but the universe. No pressure.
A good portion of the film is just Gosling and Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz) getting to know each other while trying to stop the sun-eaters. The way Gosling effortlessly banters back and forth with Rocky really sells the whole thing; it’s what makes the film as good as it is. Ortiz makes you actually feel for Rocky, too. There’s one part where he’s in danger and all you can do is hope he pulls through.
There is also a scene where the engineers are having a going-away party for the crew, complete with food, drinks, and karaoke. Hüller’s character, Stratt, gets up and starts singing the Harry Styles song, “Sign of the Times.” It goes on for a couple of verses, and at first, it felt oddly long. But afterward, it became one of my favorite parts of the film. I’m not the biggest Harry Styles fan (don’t tell my daughters that, they’d kill me!), but the way Hüller sings it makes it a haunting portrait of what might come.
Ultimately, the film is a sweet story about love and friendship. With everything going on in the world today, we definitely need that kind of message being projected into the universe.
