‘Project Hail Mary’ Review
The most perfectly crowd-pleasing movie I’ve ever seen.
[NOTE: This review contains spoilers for both the movie Project Hail Mary and the 2021 novel from which it was adapted.]
THE MOST OBVIOUS REFERENCE POINT for Project Hail Mary—aside from The Martian, which was also written by Drew Goddard based on a book by Andy Weir—is probably Interstellar. I’ve written about this before, but Interstellar is a movie that did fine on initial release, though it took audiences a few years to really rally behind it and realize it is arguably the best film in Christopher Nolan’s oeuvre. And that’s because Interstellar was pitched to audiences as the spiritual heir of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 when it was actually the spiritual heir to Steven Spielberg.
Project Hail Mary, from Goddard and the directing team of Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, is a little like Interstellar but with the Spielbergisms turned up to 11. It is the most perfectly crowd-pleasing movie I’ve ever seen in my life: the comedy is carefully calibrated to generate laughs on demand; the emotional well it draws from is deep and produces tears with precision; and it’s smart without feeling preachy or condescending. Indeed, it’s so successful I almost dismissed it as manipulative while I was watching it. And then I realized that if I was being manipulated, I didn’t really care.
Project Hail Mary is, in short, a masterpiece of pop filmmaking.
Start with the star, Ryan Gosling. This is in many ways the role his whole career has been building toward: His Ryland Grace is the perfect mix of charming and goofy, intelligent yet somewhat clueless. Grace wakes up from a coma in a spaceship, unsure how he got there, which in turn gives Gosling a chance to show off his physical comedy chops. A zero-g environment is, ironically, a great setting for a pratfall.
The crew Gosling has traveled with is dead, having perished through some accident during his voyage. As the film progresses, we flash back to his time on Earth, a series of clever exposition dumps that never feel like exposition dumps. Grace was a high school teacher; he has a doctorate, but is a pariah because he argued water is not necessary for the existence of life; and, oh yeah, the world is ending because some sort of microparasite is consuming the sun. His mission: travel to the one star we can see that isn’t being consumed by this so-called astrophage and figure out why it’s different from all the others.
Gosling and the film do a neat, almost impossible, thing about an hour into the film. In the initial flashbacks, Gosling ping-pongs off laconic European scientist Eva Stratt, played with icy but kind-eyed literalism by Sandra Hüller, and stoic G-Man Officer Steve Hatch, played by The Bear’s Lionel Boyce, as the comic relief. And then, after he reaches the phage-free star, he shifts into the role of a pseudo-straight-man, allowing the alien Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz) to take over the comic duties.
It’s not a total reversal—at no point in this film is Gosling not funny; indeed, there’s some real humor in Grace trying to communicate with the far more advanced yet charmingly childlike Rocky—but it’s a fascinating little thing, one that only works because the FX and voice work on Rocky is so absurdly pleasing. He’s like a precocious scamp in craggy form. The little rock creature is like TARS crossed with E.T. and filled with the Tasmanian Devil’s energy; he’s the most enchanting puppet1 in a live-action film . . . maybe ever? It’s almost unfair how much Goddard, Lord, and Miller make us care about this walking, talking pile of rocks; every choice they make doesn’t just work, it pulls us further into the world of the film, gives us greater emotional resonance.
I’m sure there are things I could quibble with about this movie, but all my quibbles feel like I’m reaching for something to complain about. Yes, it has about four different endings, but each ending works fine. Yes, it’s 2.5 hours long, but every minute feels earned and every moment flows seamlessly into the next. It’s as well-paced a picture as I’ve seen since Oppenheimer, another movie that zips through a runtime that looks on paper to be egregious.
Any resistance I had to the picture crumbled when I realized it was, maybe, propped up by something quite foolish: I simply haven’t felt joy like this in the theater in years. Project Hail Mary is a feel-good, emotionally resonant, ultimately triumphant paean to the human spirit. This is why we go to the movies. Heck: it’s why we tell stories. I hope it’s as big a hit as it deserves to be.
Correction (March 10, 2026, 9:25 a.m. EDT): I mistakenly referred to Rocky as a digital creation; while there’s undoubtedly some digital tinkering he’s mostly a puppet in the film, and voiced by lead puppeteer Ortiz. Which is, honestly, even more impressive. Apologies!
I loved the book, both print and audio. (Yes, I read it after I finished the audiobook—it was that good.) I was more than a bit worried that the movie wouldn’t do it justice. Glad to hear that’s not the case.
The book is terrific. It's a complex scientific story about saving our Sun - and Earth - with an alien that looks like a rocky spider. And it all works. Rocky turns out to be a completely lovable character, I mean I was truly concerned about his well being during a critical passage. Sounds ludicrous, but it all works. And Gosling has the chops. The dude can act. Can't wait to see this in IMAX.