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This giddy, wonderfully optimistic intergalactic epic teams Ryan Gosling up with a friendly extraterrestrial rock creature to save the galaxy from a catastrophic solar event. It’s proof, if it was even needed, that it’s impossible not to love the Hollywood star – even if you have a heart of stone.
With a near-irresistible combination of Steve McQueen charisma and Droopy Dog reluctance, Gosling brings charm and physical comedy chops as scientist-turned-teacher-turned-reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace, who wakes from hypersleep to find that his crew mates are dead and he’s several lightyears into a one-way mission to save the dying sun. He’ll start to tackle the task as soon as he figures out how to float through the ship without braining himself on a console.
If the actor’s last teaching assignment, heroin drama Half Nelson, went badly, this one is even less auspicious for the bemused scientist. ‘I put the “not” in “astronaut”,’ he notes when Project Hail Mary flashes back to ‘what came before’ bits that preceded lift-off. There’s been no training, he protests. He hasn’t even done ‘the bit in the pool’. The world is counting on you,’ replies Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), formidable head of this last-ditch international effort. Earth is bracing itself for frosty annihilation, so he’s probably dead either way.
Enter that mysterious rock-shaped alien, ‘Rocky’, who docks alongside Ryland’s ship and makes first contact. The pair are soon finding a way to communicate, pooling their skills and knowledge in common purpose. It’s the bromance of the year, with practical effects and puppeteering giving the most loveable alien this side of E.T. a sense of tactility.
It’s the science-fiction blockbuster we need in these fractious times
Co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) defer to Andy Weir’s hard(ish) sci-fi source novel to dial up the sincerity, though without sacrificing all the silliness. The pacing is brisk, bar a sluggish stretch when Ryland and Rocky size each other up.
As with his adaptation of The Martian, another Weir rescue mission that delights in collaboration and discovery as much as the balls-to-the-wall thrills of the genre, screenwriter Drew Goddard locates the sweet spot between stakes, comedy and heart in the story. This isn’t a philosophically-laden sci-fi in the spirit of Sunshine or Solaris, but closer to Silent Running in its celebration of ingenuity and resilience. A third-act twist changes everything and nothing about our feelings for Ryland’s heroics.
Greig Fraser’s ethereal cinematography brings a golden glow to the capsule interiors. The VFX look glorious, too: vast sapphire and turquoise firmaments that you’d queue to see at a planetarium, even if there wasn’t a movie attached. Daniel Pemberton’s fabulous score echoes that celestial spirit.
With Gosling and Hüller to the fore, Lord and Miller have delivered a cosmic adventure with hope in its heart and a twinkle in its eye. It’s the science-fiction blockbuster we need in these fractious times: an anthem to resilience and co-operation that seeks solutions and rejects exceptionalism – American, or even human – to celebrate the simple possibilities of, well, just getting along a bit better. Because sometimes it really is about the friends we made along the way.
In cinemas worldwide Fri Mar 20.