Project Hail Mary: A Spacey Buddy Movie

There are these two guys. They’re from very different backgrounds and have complexions that look not at all alike. Through the magic of cinema, they step past the language barrier and learn to communicate with each other, and even have a lighthearted moment despite the catastrophe they’re living in. 

Then the pair of buddies—thrust together by disastrous circumstance—embark on a solution for said calamity. This is “Project Hail Mary,” the family-friendly blockbuster starring Ryan Gosling (for me, forever Ken from “Barbie”) as Ryland Grace, a science teacher sent into space to save Earth. 

We first meet him in his classroom at Grover Cleveland Middle School, where he has to skirt his students’ questions, along the lines of “Is the planet really on the way to destruction?”, by telling them to ask their parents. Because the answer depends on Mom and Dad’s politics of course.

What is the threat portrayed in “Project Hail Mary”? It’s something about the sun being slowly snuffed out. Watching the movie, you can’t help but substitute climate change for the fictional phenomenon playing out on the screen. 

But if Grace can go up in a spaceship and use his knowledge to fix things, we’re all going to be OK. Maybe. Distant maybe. Hence the “hail Mary.” 

The picture is directed by a couple of friends: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who also made “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” (2009) and “The Lego Movie” (2014). These guys work together well, clearly—especially on kids’ fare that entertains the grownups as well. 

For their latest venture, Lord and Miller adapted Andy Weir’s novel. “Project Hail Mary,” the book has been camping out on best seller lists from its debut in 2021 all the way to 2025. The movie release will no doubt keep it in our consciousness for a while yet. Weir also authored “The Martian,” which became an enormously successful Matt Damon outing—but that film is far grittier sci-fi than “Project Hail Mary.” 

The film follows the classic science fiction-space-thriller path. Man leaves Earth in a dazzling interplanetary vessel; man encounters another life form; man floats outside his ship in a visually magnificent interlude. Then things go terribly wrong and we grapple with the possibility that he will be killed and left to drift away into the blackness.

Fortunately “Project Hail Mary” brings one big difference: the friendship that forms between Grace and Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz), a stony-skinned spider-like being who lives in a kind of bubble with transparent facets.

Rocky comes from a massive golden spaceship. And Grace, upon discovery of this complex structure, makes a foray into space using a red astronaut outfit replete with a long red connector that looks like an umbilical cord. 

Yes, it is glorious to watch Grace swim into the infinite. “Project Hail Mary” should by all means be seen on the big screen at the theater, to enjoy the full effect courtesy of the giant army of Industrial Light & Magic and Sony Imageworks carpenters, artists and technicians.

The heart of the story, though, is in the platonic relationship Rocky and Grace share. They start out mimicking each other, then they dance a little. They even talk about their feelings. 

Grace was chosen to go into space in part because he’s unmarried and childless. When he wakes up after blasting off, he is all alone—a relatable character, a representative for those of us who feel isolated in our own technology-laden world. 

So it’s all the more charming when our hero finds a true friend. And the question “Project Hail Mary” poses is, in the end, inspirational: Who knows what’s possible when friends get over their differences and work together?