Dir: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, US, 2026, 156 mins
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz
Review by Carol Allen
So a sort of prayer then. And that I guess solves the riddle of why a project to save the earth from some unknown entities which are killing the sun and all the stars should be so named.
The film opens very intriguingly with Dr Ryland Grace (Ryan Reynolds) waking up in some sort of capsule and looking like Rip Van Winkle with shaggy hair and beard.
He has no idea where he is and why but as he explores what we and he soon realise is a spaceship and discovers his shipmates haven’t survived the experience, his memory starts to come back in useful flashbacks.
We learn that Grace is talented molecular biologist and now a high school science teacher – rather a good one it appears from his relationship with his pupils. With his super scientist hat on he has written a paper on that killer entity threat, which has been spotted by German technocrat Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller). She is heading up Project Hail Mary and has marked Grace out as the man to save the world. For a while the action cuts between Grace exploring the spaceship and what it can do and flashbacks telling us how and why he got there.
The story livens up considerably when he encounters an alien spaceship from another galaxy with the same mission. That too has just one survivor, a rather cute and clever being who looks like a crab made out of rocks and who works out how to link up with Grace and indeed ingeniously how to communicate. Grace names him Rocky (because he looks like a crab made of rocks) and together they set about trying to save the universe.
Rocky is in the tradition of other non-human characters such as R2D2, C-3PO and Chewbacca in Star Wars, T-800 The Terminator, the homesick ET and our close encounters with Spielberg’s skinny aliens, all of whom have won an affectionate place in the hearts of sci-fi fans. Will Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz) gain a place on the alien roll of honour?
He certainly arrives just in time to save a film which is otherwise in danger of becoming a beautiful looking but rather earnest bore. The other element which saves it from that fate though is Gosling, who for much of the film has to hold our attention on his own. He’s such a good actor he succeeds but one does heave a sigh of relief when Rocky appears in his life to salve his solitude.
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