Project Hail Mary, adapted from Andy Weir's sci-fi bestseller, follows a desperate astronaut mission of the future. Named by Nasa after the 'Hail Mary pass' in American football, the spacecraft is launched in a last-ditch attempt to save Earth, which is dying because alien microbes are snuffing out the sun.
Ryan Gosling plays Dr Ryland Grace, a hunky high school science teacher who wakes up from an induced coma with no memory of why he is aboard. The rest of the crew are dead, and Grace must figure out how he got there and how to rescue humanity. Gosling's effortlessly charming performance keeps the film watchable, despite moments of dullness and puppyish silliness.
The story centres on Grace's bromance with a friendly spider-shaped alien nicknamed Rocky, who scuttles about like ET and communicates in simple phrases such as 'Rocky fix'. Flashbacks show how Grace, a brilliant molecular biologist forced into teaching, was recruited by the impassive German technocrat Eva Stratt, played by Sandra Hüller.
The film shares the cheerful, breezy humour of Weir's earlier adaptation The Martian, but its tonal commitment to unseriousness means it feels both funny ha-ha and funny peculiar. The final moment before the credits resembles a kids' TV show, undermining any earlier attempts at seriousness.
Project Hail Mary includes classic sci-fi tropes like huge spacecraft with vertiginous tunnels and legacy pop music, but it does not aim for the awe of Interstellar. Ryan Gosling just about manages to catch this Hail Mary pass.
