Project Hail Mary (2026)
Let me be honest with you: I walked into Project Hail Mary fully prepared to be disappointed. The early critic chatter was dominated by how "cute" and "funny" Ryan Gosling's companion was, and that framing had me bracing for some kind of cosmic Disney romp, a quip-heavy, feel-good sci-fi comedy that treats the universe as a backdrop for warm fuzzies. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are brilliant comedy directors, obviously. I love their work. But hard science fiction requires a particular kind of patience and restraint that their instincts don't always naturally pull towards. I was worried.
I'm happy to report I was wrong to be.
What Lord and Miller have actually delivered is a remarkably grounded, deeply compelling piece of hard science fiction that takes the vast, isolating terror of deep space completely seriously. As a massive space science nerd, this picture absolutely tickled my fancy, and not because it was trying to be a laugh-a-minute sitcom. The astrophysics are treated with genuine respect, the problem-solving has real weight to it, and the existential loneliness of the situation is never papered over with easy laughs.
Gosling is fantastic throughout. He anchors the picture with a weary, brilliant intensity that grounds the high-concept science in genuine human emotion. It's the kind of performance that reminds you he's genuinely one of the best actors working today, something I always felt was slightly undersold even in his acclaimed earlier work. See my thoughts on Drive and The Nice Guys if you want the full picture of just how consistently good the man is. Here he's asked to carry enormous stretches of film largely alone, and he does it with complete conviction.
And fair play to the creative team for the companion. I won't get into specifics, because half the joy is in the discovery, but it's an absolutely brilliant piece of technical wizardry and the relationship that develops between the two characters is where the film earns every bit of its emotional pull. The early reviews weren't lying about the humour and the heart, they just undersold how well it all serves the story. This is not a gimmicky sidekick situation. It's a profoundly moving partnership that the film takes real time to build properly, and it pays off in a way that genuinely got to me.
That said, the film isn't without its problems, and the main one is the runtime. Clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, there are stretches in the middle act where the pacing loses its grip. Some of the procedural problem-solving sequences, scientifically fascinating as they are to a nerd like me, do occasionally drag the narrative down to a crawl. A sharper editorial eye could have comfortably shaved twenty minutes off the clock without losing any meaningful story, and the film would have been tighter and more propulsive for it. It's not a fatal flaw, but it is a real one, and I'd be doing you a disservice to pretend otherwise.
What keeps it from mattering too much is the sheer ambition on display and the quality of what surrounds those slower passages. This is intelligent, emotionally rich science fiction that respects its audience enough to actually explain what's happening and why it matters. Lord and Miller have made something that proves you can have mind-bending astrophysics and genuine warmth at the same time, without one undermining the other.
Four stars. A cracking watch, a few nips and tucks away from being something genuinely special.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2026 | Watched: 2026-07-19
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads · MGM Plus Amazon Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · fuboTV · MGM+ Amazon Channel · Philo
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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