Project Hail Mary
Directed by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller · Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce
Science Fiction · 2026-03-20
“A genuinely great space odyssey that lands on MGM Plus today, and yes, even Sally has to grudgingly hand it to Ryan Gosling.”
Here is the part I hate. Project Hail Mary is good. Really good. It landed a 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, grossed 682 million dollars, and now it slides onto MGM Plus where you can watch it without remortgaging the cinema snack bar. Ryan Gosling wakes up on a spaceship with no memory and a planet to save, and he carries the whole thing on charm and panic, which is precisely the Gosling skill set.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the Lego Movie and Spider-Verse guys, directing a hard sci-fi survival story sounds like a category error, and the marketing leaned into calling this an epic science fiction comedy, a genre label that should not work. Somehow it does. Drew Goddard's script, adapting Andy Weir, keeps the science legible and the stakes human, and Sandra Hüller does not waste a single frame. It is smart, it is warm, it is the rare blockbuster that respects you.
So what does Sally even roast here. The comedy framing occasionally undercuts the dread right when the film should let you sweat. And let us be honest, a chunk of this works because it is Gosling being lovable in a tin can, which is less filmmaking than casting insurance. But those are quibbles. This is the good stuff, and you can watch it at home tonight. Annoying.
- 01
Ryan Gosling anchors the entire film with a perfect mix of charm and quiet panic.
- 02
Drew Goddard's script keeps hard science legible without ever dumbing it down.
- 03
Lord and Miller balance genuine dread with warmth and humour against all odds.
- 04
A 94 percent critic score and 682 million worldwide back up every bit of the hype.
- 01
The comedy framing sometimes deflates tension the story had carefully earned.
- 02
A lot of the heavy lifting is just Gosling being likeable, which is a crutch.
- 03
The epic science fiction comedy label oversells the laughs and undersells the dread.
- 04
At blockbuster scale a few emotional beats get smoothed into crowd pleasing.
Anyone who wants a smart, big hearted space survival story and finally has it sitting on streaming tonight.
Hard sci-fi purists who want their dread undiluted and bristle the moment a survival thriller cracks a joke.
Selling a serious Andy Weir adaptation as an epic science fiction comedy was a risky bit of marketing, and it mostly paid off, but it set some viewers up for a laugh riot and handed them an emotional space odyssey instead. The Gosling in a spacesuit poster did more selling than any tagline ever could.
Your website, CV, or whatever you made. I'll roast that too.
A full teardown from €2,99. No mercy.