“Project Hail Mary” Is a Slam Dunk

Jonathan Olley/Amazon MGM Studios

Project Hail Mary is a lot of fun.

That’s the first thing I’ve felt emerging from every project written, directed, or produced by filmmaking duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller. 21 Jump Street. The Lego Movie. Into the Spider-Verse. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Their sequels and spinoffs. (Not Solo: A Star Wars Story.) I have my gripes with some of them, but they’ve all paid back my ticket price with significant interest on entertainment value alone. Sometimes, they’ve offered significantly more.

Project Hail Mary falls somewhat near the middle of that pack, though it gets better the more I think about it. It’s a dazzlingly entertaining two and a half hours. Ryan Gosling is almost in full Ken mode, willing you to stare at the screen through sheer charisma. Still, he perfectly embodies everything the film needs from him. You feel every moment of the screenplay thanks in large part to his performance as Dr. Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher recruited for a suicide mission to save the world. Gosling leans heavily into Grace’s role as audience surrogate, defined more by what he has in common with viewers than what’s specific to him. Through him, the movie asks us a few hard questions.

I’ll steer clear of spoilers, but if it’s in the first full trailer, I consider it fair game. If you’ve been avoiding knowing too many plot details before seeing it, stop reading here.

Jonathan Olley/Amazon MGM Studios

There’s an adorable alien puppet. Grace meets Rocky (four-legged, faceless, named in English by Grace, husband to Adrian) while traveling to a star 11 light-years from his apartment. He’s all that way out in space to study a bizarre cosmic phenomenon that could cool the sun and thereby wipe out all life on Earth. His mission gives the film, and the Andy Weir novel it’s based on, its title: The world’s scientists have launched one last-ditch mission, a Hail Mary (because you just know when 200 different nations’ scientists get together, they’re going to talk about American football) to save the world. A team must travel to the moon to study the one nearby star that is not cooling, then see whether they can learn enough to save the rest of the planet. The film begins with Grace waking up at the tail end of that flight, his two crewmates dead in the bunks next to him.

Project Hail Mary is split into two timelines. The earliest, chronologically, begins when Grace is recruited by the governments and scientists working to find some way to save life on Earth. Their leader is Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), a stern but optimistic commander who can match Ryan Gosling quip for quip and belt Harry Styles at karaoke. Stratt and Grace work together to solve the existential threat to life on the planet. Against this existential threat, something is asked of everyone. Some, like Grace, are asked to give everything.

Steven Spielberg is in every corner of this film’s DNA. He effectively invented the action-comedy genre that Lord and Miller have spent their career weaponizing. Their fully realized practical puppet owes a lot to the most famous alien in movie history (so far). Both Project Hail Mary and E.T. tell stories about humans befriending aliens, about the benefits of leaning on companionship and learning from differences. When he first meets Rocky, Grace jokingly hums the famous chords from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Jonathan Olley/Amazon MGM Studios

Like Spielberg, Lord and Miller are entertainers first, humanists second. They believe they need to earn the audience’s attention, and they do, through quick-cut, meticulously improvised bursts of chaos and behavior. It reminds me of a J.J. Abrams quote about The Force Awakens that takes a lot of flak online: “How do we make this moment delightful? That was really the only requirement.” A lot of movies get ruined with that ethos, but Lord and Miller somehow achieve the same effect while still telling emotionally coherent, rewarding stories. It’s one reason why they’ve revitalized a number of lagging Hollywood genres. They deliver the whole package: the sensory overload of modern media, the emotional wallop of classic Hollywood. Like Spielberg, they’re determined not to leave the average teenage cinemagoer behind—but while communicating with that audience, they will challenge the boundaries of what’s possible.

Project Hail Mary is ultimately a love story. It suggests people sacrifice the most for those they love. It offers, as example, a profound love between Ryan Gosling and an igneous alien whose thumbs only go down. There are spaceships and action and science jokes and the funniest diplomats you’d ever hope to meet. It’s delightful for two and a half straight hours and doesn’t overstay its welcome until well into the last half hour. The final moments are worth the long walk. It’s dead set on being good enough to will audiences back to theaters. To borrow another obvious sports metaphor: game, set, match.