Project Hail Mary review: Gosling’s science teacher in space
Ryan Gosling plays a science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s big, warm space adventure. It’s now on Prime Video in the UK.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 24 October 2026
Contents
Most of us remember the science teacher who set fire to a desk with a Bunsen burner. Few of us pictured him as the last hope of humanity. Project Hail Mary asks us to do exactly that, and then makes the job easier by casting Ryan Gosling, who still looks like he has never marked a piece of homework in his life.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel was one of this year’s big cinema releases. It’s now on Prime Video, and it’s a proper old-fashioned space yarn. It runs 157 minutes, has a big heart and comes with the kind of brain-teasers that make you feel clever while sitting on the sofa. It is also slightly daft, but more on that later.
Premiere2026-03-15
GenreScience Fiction, Adventure
CastRyan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Lionel Boyce
Directed byPhil Lord, Christopher Miller
Running time157 min
Rated12A
Watch onPrime Video
86%
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Wake up, sir, you’re light years from home
The set-up is a lovely bit of science fiction. Ryland Grace wakes up on a spaceship with no idea who he is or how he got there. Bits of memory drift back like an old song you can only half remember. He used to teach science. Something is draining the sun. And he has somehow ended up as the man sent to work out what it is and how to stop it before everything on Earth dies.
That’s all you need to know, and all I’m telling you. Part of the fun is piecing it together alongside Grace as the flashbacks fill in how a schoolteacher ended up in deep space. The film spends long stretches with only one human on screen, so it lives or dies on whether you’ll happily spend two and a half hours with its lead. Luckily, you will.
The faces behind the mission
Gosling plays Grace as a reluctant hero who frets and jokes and occasionally panics, which is how most of us would handle waking up in orbit. He’s a long way from the mournful replicant of Blade Runner 2049. This is the comic Gosling of The Nice Guys and Barbie, but with real fear underneath the gags. Sandra Hüller, so good in Anatomy of a Fall, gives the Earthbound scenes some steel. Lionel Boyce, Milana Vayntrub and Ken Leung fill out the cast, and puppeteer James Ortiz contributes a great deal more than his billing suggests.
Behind the camera are Lord and Miller, the duo behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street. This is their first film as directors in around a dozen years, and their talent for mixing silly jokes with real feeling hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s a 12A, so you can take the teenagers if they can be persuaded to look up from their phones.
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Practical magic and puppyish silliness
What works is the warmth. Too much modern sci-fi is either grimly serious or so busy setting up sequels that it forgets to be fun. Project Hail Mary is fun. The problem-solving scenes have the same pleasure as The Martian, which Weir also wrote: a clever person, a ticking clock and a pile of household science. The practical effects give the spacecraft real weight, and there are moments of real tenderness, especially in the second half, that caught me off guard. I didn’t expect a film about solar physics to leave me misty-eyed.
It’s a big-hearted throwback to the space adventures we grew up on: brainy, daft and far more moving than it has any right to be.
What doesn’t work quite so well is the length and the tone. At 157 minutes it sags in places, and the flashbacks sometimes interrupt just as things are getting going in space. The humour can be a bit too pleased with itself, and if you prefer your sci-fi in the awed, cathedral-quiet style of Interstellar, you may find this one lightweight. It also leans heavily on nostalgia, with echoes of the films many of us watched on VHS until the tape wore thin. Whether that’s a comfort or a crutch depends on your mood.
What the critics say
Most reviewers loved it. Empire gave it four stars, calling it “a very watchable old-school blockbuster crowd-pleaser”, and the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin also gave it four stars, describing it as “great fun”. The Independent awarded four stars too, praising it as “immensely likeable and technically impressive” but noting “the whiff of top-shelf nostalgia”. For the BBC, Nicholas Barber found it “zippily entertaining” despite the running time.
Across the Atlantic, The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called it a “soaring interplanetary buddy movie”. The Times found Gosling’s charisma “out of this world”, and the Irish Times called it a “sentimental treat”.
The main dissenter was the Guardian. Peter Bradshaw gave it three stars and called it “a bit silly, but Gosling’s charisma keeps it watchable”, adding that it has “moments of dullness and a sort of puppyish silliness”. That’s harsh, but not entirely wrong. On release it scored 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about as close to unanimous approval as critics get.
Where to watch it in the UK
Project Hail Mary played in UK cinemas earlier this year and is now streaming on Prime Video, so if you already pay for Amazon Prime, it costs you nothing extra. If you get hooked and want more, Andy Weir’s original novel is in bookshops and on Audible. It goes into much more scientific detail, which will either delight you or remind you why you dropped physics after your O-levels.
It’s one to watch on the biggest screen you have, with the sound turned up and the phone in another room. If you’re splitting it over two evenings, the halfway point makes a natural break.
Verdict
Project Hail Mary is a generous, clever and warm space adventure. It’s a bit too long and a bit too goofy, but Gosling holds it together. It’s ideal for anyone who loved The Martian or grew up on Spielberg-era wonder and misses blockbusters that actually have a heart. If you want po-faced, cerebral sci-fi, look elsewhere. For everyone else, it’s three hours well spent, give or take the toilet break. Four stars.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
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