--- description: 'Project Hail Mary' is a large-scale movie with a modest heart, thanks in part to Ryan Gosling’s performance as a reluctant astronaut stranded in space title: Review: Project Hail Mary image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta998588e8d74986a/69bda741a9ca78683de68539/PHM_30245_R2_proxy_md.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Ryan Gosling Is Stellar as a Reluctant Astronaut in 'Project Hail Mary'  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic Mar 20, 2026 8:24 PM CUT  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic Mar 20, 2026 8:24 PM CUT It’s hard to find tenderness anywhere in this world, particularly in today’s mainstream movies. The point of movies, of course, is to reach people, but perhaps because we so seldom see movies in the dark together these days, the sense of connection they used to foster feels more out of reach than ever. The small miracle of [_Project Hail Mary_](https://time.com/7342338/most-anticipated-movies-2026/ "undefined")—directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and adapted by Drew Goddard from [Andy Weir’s novel](https://time.com/6990642/best-audiobooks-for-road-trips/ "undefined")—is that it tosses out a sturdy space tether for us to grab onto. It’s a large-scale movie with a modest heart, thanks in large part to [Ryan Gosling](https://time.com/6972690/ryan-gosling-the-fall-guy-tribute/ "undefined")’s performance as a reluctant [astronaut stranded in space](https://time.com/5627032/most-realistic-space-movies/ "undefined")—a man who, for the first section of the movie, believes he’s truly alone, only to be saved, in both the philosophical and literal sense, by an unlikely ally. We get our first glimpse of Gosling’s Ryland Grace as he’s awakening from what we’ll learn is an induced coma, in a spaceship jillions of miles from Earth. Even before he’s fully freed himself from the rubber suit he’s been sleeping in—a butt tube dangles ignominiously from its baggy seat—he realizes that he’s fully alone, somewhere in space, and he can’t remember who he is or how he got there. Though the ship is able to talk to him—he receives instructions and useful technical information—it’s not much company. And the melancholy truth is that none of the other members of the [ship’s crew](https://time.com/5423099/first-man-moon-landing-neil-armstrong-ryan-gosling/ "undefined"), people whose names and faces he doesn’t even remember, have survived their slumber. In one of the movie’s most offhandedly affecting scenes, Grace goes through the photographs and trinkets they’ve left behind as a way of both honoring them and trying to recollect who he is and what he’s doing so far away from home. Via a series of flashback scenes, we find out exactly who he is even before he does. Grace is—or was, before he was jettisoned into space—a middle-school science teacher who’s brilliant but somewhat lackadaisical, and we see him explaining to his students a recent and disturbing discovery: The sun is dying. The cause? A gaggle of mysterious organisms are eating it. (The science may sound crazy and made-up, but it’s wholly believable as the movie presents it.) After school one day, an unsmiling official from a mysterious worldwide organization, Eva Stratt (played by German actress Sandra Hüller, of [_Anatomy of a Fall_ ](https://time.com/6323274/anatomy-of-a-fall-review/ "undefined")and [_The Zone of Interest_](https://time.com/6554425/the-zone-of-interest-true-story/ "undefined")), accosts him and humorlessly recruits him for a special project. He’s smart enough to be able to help—and yet somehow, he ends up stranded far from home, with no way to get back. _Project Hail Mary_ is only partly a story about a sad man trapped in space, the loneliest place in the universe. At one point we see Gosling’s Grace dancing with a mop, kind of the way Tom Hanks anthropomorphized a deflated soccer ball in [_Cast Away_](https://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/15/holding-out-for-a-hero-10-great-rescue-movies/slide/best-rescue-yourself-movie/ "undefined")_,_ and you could be forgiven for thinking _Project Hail Mary_ is headed in the same direction. But _Project Hail Mary_ is really about an unlikely friendship, and an attempt to save at least two planets. As he rolls through space, Grace encounters a magnificent-looking ship far more beautiful and advanced than the junker he’s traveling in—it appears to be made of interconnected metal spikes lit from within. And on that ship is another lonely being, the only survivor of _his_ particular space mission. That being is a clever, sensitive pile of rocks with five stony arms and no face, and he reveals himself to Grace by sending the human scientist a little present made of something that looks like hematite. Eventually, the two beings meet. Grace figures out a way to communicate with this vaguely winsome but at first unreadable little guy, and a friendship is born. He calls his new friend Rocky. It almost feels like giving too much away to reveal the existence of Rocky, who is, by the way, an actual puppet and not just CGI magic. (The actor and puppeteer who brings him to life is James Ortiz.) If you haven’t already read Weir’s book, Rocky’s arrival in the movie is something of a surprise. But the story hinges on his presence, and on the bond he and Grace forge. By this point, Grace has figured out that there’s no way he can get back home in his lifetime; there’s nothing left to do but to save the Earth in a blaze of glory. Rocky becomes his partner in this task—the dying sun will eventually kill off his planet, too—but mostly, these two are company for one another. They tune in to each other’s sense of humor. Grace learns that Rocky has a partner at home, one with an unpronounceable name. (He decides to call her Adrian, for obvious reasons.) And despite his clumsy-looking limbs, Rocky can make any little gewgaw, necessary or frivolous, out of that hematite-looking stuff. Together, he and Grace solve their interplanetary problem, and even figure out how each of them can get home. At one point, Rocky expresses gratitude for the way Grace has dropped into his life: “Rocky happy not alone.” But that’s not the ending. The final third of _Project Hail Mary_ feels a bit baggy and wayward; it could speed a little more directly, like those sunlight-eating miscreants, toward the movie’s conclusion. This is the most ambitious picture, in terms of structure and spectacle, that the filmmaking duo of [Lord and Miller](https://time.com/3948692/star-wars-han-solo-christopher-miller-phil-lord/ "undefined") have ever made, and sometimes it reels out of their grasp. But these are also the guys behind _Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie,_ and _Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse._ All of their movies, including this one, have a bright, generous spirit—and Gosling fits in perfectly. Gosling plays Grace—unassuming, quietly brainy, a little rumpled—as the exact opposite of a wannabe-hero; all he wants is to be left alone to teach his science classes and bicycle home. But with Rocky's help, he grows into his mission and finds a new purpose for his previously wayward life. There’s something winningly absent-minded about Gosling’s performance here. Grace pads around the ship in nerdy science gear (including a T-shirt emblazoned with the Periodic Table and the legend “I Wear This Shirt Periodically”), but the goofiness of his attire suits him. Just after he’s learned the rest of his ship’s crew are dead, he performs that lonely waltz with the mop—he’s light on his feet, but sad, like a disillusioned Gene Kelly. Yet something in him springs back to life when he meets Rocky. The fact that Rocky is, in real life, a puppet rather than a computer-generated image probably makes all the difference. Gosling is such a human, and humane, actor, that he can easily mirror the humanity of a creature who’s not even human—one who doesn’t even have a face. Together, these two are unbeatable, and they also represent an old-fashioned ideal of what the movies used to mean to us. Sometimes it's enough to be able to say, "Happy not alone." ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/20/project-hail-mary-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/20/project-hail-mary-review/"},"headline":"Ryan Gosling Is Stellar as a Reluctant Astronaut in 'Project Hail Mary'","datePublished":"2026-03-20T20:24:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-20T21:39:10.101Z","description":"'Project Hail Mary' is a large-scale movie with a modest heart, thanks in part to Ryan Gosling’s performance as a reluctant astronaut stranded in space","url":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/20/project-hail-mary-review/","keywords":["movies","culturepod","review"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta998588e8d74986a/69bda741a9ca78683de68539/PHM_30245_R2_proxy_md.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta998588e8d74986a/69bda741a9ca78683de68539/PHM_30245_R2_proxy_md.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"PHM_30245_R2_proxy_md.jpg","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/20/project-hail-mary-review/","name":"Ryan Gosling Is Stellar as a Reluctant Astronaut in 'Project Hail Mary'"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Project Hail Mary | Official Trailer","description":"'Project Hail Mary' is a large-scale movie with a modest heart, thanks in part to Ryan Gosling’s performance as a reluctant astronaut stranded in space","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/h1E9at0Q/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-03-20T21:36:59.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/h1E9at0Q.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/20/project-hail-mary-review/","duration":"PT2M43S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/20/project-hail-mary-review/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```