Gosling and co deliver a sure-fire smash hit

Friday, 20 March 2026

Project Hail Mary (M, 156 mins) Directed by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller ****½

Here's the setup, and it's only moderately terrifying. Some sort of interstellar fungus has been infecting every star visible from Earth and has found its way onto our Sun. Global temperatures are already beginning to cool, and it is estimated we have about 30 years or so before most of our crops die and starvation wipes out half the population.

The only glimmer of hope lies in a distant star called Tau Ceti, which seems to be immune to the infection. So it is decided to pool the resources of the Earth's various space programmes, and launch a ship to Tau Ceti to find out why it is surviving. And then to use that knowledge to craft a vaccine which will save the sun and all of our lives.

Project Hail Mary is a science fiction adventure produced and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and written by Drew Goddard, based on the 2021 novel by Andy Weir. It stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a man who awakens on an interstellar spacecraft with no memory of how he came to be there.

And before you roll your eyes and stop reading, you should at least know that author Andy Weir (The Martian), who wrote the novel Project Hail Mary that this film is based on, is renowned for keeping his yarns at least loosely within the realms of theoretical possibility. Like I said, it's moderately terrifying.

Also, the makers of Project Hail Mary - including stars Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller- manage to get all of that information onto the screen in about 10 minutes flat, while still finding time to deliver a couple of well-worked jokes and setting up the smaller, human stories that will give this film its tension and its soul. It's a phenomenal feat of writing, editing and acting. And luckily, so is everything that follows.

Ryan Gosling, left, and Lionel Boyce as Officer Carl, a security guard, in a scene from Project Hail Mary.

Look, the best and simplest thing to say about Project Hail Mary is that it's just a bloody good film. It is hugely entertaining, quite often laugh out loud funny, quite definitely moving - and it flat-out delivers everything the months of publicity have been promising.

Ryan Gosling as Dr Ryland Grace, an astronaut on a mission to save humanity.

It's not as serious as Arrival or Interstellar, although anyone who loves either of those films will quite probably like Project Hail Mary as well. And it certainly isn't as silly and purely popcorn as Independence Day or Mars Attacks. But if you just want to be thrilled and entertained, without engaging your brain too much, then I reckon Project Hail Mary will tick all your boxes too.

Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there.

In the lead, as molecular biologist and unwilling spaceman Ryland Grace, Ryan Gosling dials in every molecule of charm that he possesses and earns every cent of whatever fortune he gets paid.

Also, Gosling seems to have negotiated a deal with his producers that he will be tanned, tousled and attractively disheveled in every role he takes, and Project Hail Mary is no exception. Even when he's being thrown around an airlock in a spacesuit and bleeding from numerous superficial wounds, Gosling still mostly looks like a half-eaten caramel Magnum that has been brought to life and told to act adorable.

Up against Gosling, at least in the Earth-bound preamble and flashbacks, German actor Sandra Hüller (The Zone of Interest) puts some real flesh on the bones of the hard-ass-who's-driving-the-project character. Hüller's role in Project Hail Mary is the exact equivalent of Forest Whitaker's in Arrival. But I reckon Hüller does it better.

While up in orbit around Tau Ceti, puppeteer and actor James Ortiz excellently provides one half of a duo as Project Hail Mary becomes an unlikely buddy-comedy in space.

Project Hail Mary is a good time at the movies, and it pretty much demands to be seen on the biggest screen in town, with the best sound system. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) have got a rare gift for mixing up genres, and for making tough concepts easy to follow and fun. They have a major hit on their hands here. Even with a couple of gargantuan movies to come this year, Project Hail Mary is still going to be one of the best remembered films of 2026.

Project Hail Mary is in cinemas now.