Project Hail Mary is a great alien buddy-comedy stuck orbiting a novel

Rocky, sent by his own planet in his own ship (filled with the bodies of his own crewmembers) on a similar mission, is Grace’s unlikely double—and becomes Grace’s desperate coworker despite their inability to share an atmosphere. Their interspecies bond, formed through crystalline barriers and a jerry-rigged translation program that makes the alien engineer sound like an enterprising toddler or Koko the gorilla, is the heart of the film. It’s a little parental, a little Aliens Say The Darndest Things. Rocky’s cute, scampering, chattering puppet—voiced and operated by James Ortiz, whose team creates a character Jim Henson would envy—provides a natural personality foil to the perpetually reluctant and amused Grace, whose boat-rocking stint as a molecular biologist ended with him teaching middle school.

Observing the odd couple interact—first solely through their vessels, then through scientific constants, then in person—is much more fun than simply watching another stranded spaceman send jargon-filled video messages off into the void. As Rocky and Grace ostensibly figure out how to save their homes using data gleaned from the star they’re stationed outside of, they’re also figuring out how to communicate, how to safely hang out with each other, and how to teach each other things. This relationship mostly overrides the larger mission, which means that the thrills—whether housed inside practical Weir-style plot twists or flashy spacewalk set pieces—are never especially pressing. But the time spent aboard the Hail Mary is far more winning than the frequent flashbacks to Earth, where the film metes out exposition through Grace’s accessible, Martian-style experiments.

These flashbacks are also the only times Grace interacts with other humans, specifically Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), the hardass head of the Hail Mary expedition. These illuminating yet disruptive sequences (which almost certainly worked better on the page) clear the fog from Grace’s memory, while shedding light on his immature character—how did this handsome non-astronaut screw-up end up stuck in space, anyways? The glimpses we get into the international initiative to save Earth and its sun are cursory and, like the rest of the film, comedy-forward. It’s funny most of the time, cringe-inducing some of the time, and almost always sentimental. But at least back in space, this tone is bolstered by impressive spacecraft design, arresting exterior VFX, and the best skittering critter the screen has seen in years.

And because of this, it mostly works that Project Hail Mary is more concerned with Rocky than with humanity. Grace’s acceptance of responsibility and the notions of self-sacrifice that come along with it never succumb to the saccharine, feet-dragging endings of his film, because Rocky is both an endearing figure and a good-enough metaphor for why one should act selflessly. In conveying this, Lord and Miller, in their first finished film since getting booted from Solo almost a decade ago, maintain their sense of clever silliness—a silent space-set sequence between the two spaceships is a delightfully dumb use of millions of VFX dollars. They also struggle to wrestle their film’s scope into a form that’s both manageable and focuses on the elements that interest them. Over two-and-a-half hours, the duo’s film gazes in wonder at alien engineering, opens its heart to human vulnerability through karaoke, and makes the case that inspiring the next generation (or at least perpetuating its existence) is alluring enough to shake the smarmiest manchildren from their self-imposed exile. Most effectively, though, Project Hail Mary sees a personal sense of humor shine through the bludgeoning grandeur of a AAA sci-fi.

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Writer: Drew Goddard
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub
Release Date: March 20, 2026