The science fiction genre has been primarily a den of downers over the past decade, featuring alien invasions, ecological disaster, rampaging dinosaurs, artificial intelligence run amok, and various riffs on totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and dystopianism. This is hardly new, of course, since science fiction has always lent itself to portents of doom. Just look at the 1950s, the decade that made sci-fi a contender genre: While the decade began with upbeat films about space travel and the excitement of landing on distant planets, it was soon overrun with pods, blobs, and Martian invasions. The genre's darker contours have largely defined it in recent years, which is part of what makes Project Hail Mary such a refreshing change of pace. An often funny, but always emotionally engaging epic, it is about an unlikely hero's attempt to save not just Earth, but much of the known universe, via a long-shot mission in which he is launched light years into the cosmos to track down the source of an interstellar infection that is causing stars (including our sun) to die.

Like Ridley Scott's The Martian (2015), Project Hail Mary is based on a book by computer scientist-turned-novelist Andy Weir. However, unlike The Martian, it is not about a lone man trying to save himself, but rather about a duo trying to save the universe. The fact that the duo consists of an introverted science teacher with a penchant for punny T-shirts (my favorite being the one with the periodic table that says "I Wear This Shirt Periodically") and a three-foot alien that looks like a miniature version of Stonehenge come to life makes it that much more delightful. Pairing an unconventional hero with a faceless rock-like alien was a substantial risk, quite likely the riskiest big-screen relationship since Tom Hanks bonded with a blood-smeared volleyball in Castaway (2000). However, just as Hanks did in that film, Ryan Gosling proves that he can hold the screen largely on his own, although he is given ample support by the multi-legged alien he dubs Rocky.

The screenplay, which was penned by Drew Goddard (who also adapted The Martian), balances present-tense action and lengthy flashbacks that explain how and why Gosling's character, Ryland Grace (yes, yes, that name is a little too on the nose), gets launched deep into outer space. In fact, the film begins in media res, with Grace waking up on the ship after an 11-year induced coma only to find that the pilot and engineer who were travelling with him have died on the journey, leaving him completely alone to do a mission originally intended for three. As the flashbacks gradually inform us, the sun has begun to dim due to the presence of so-called astrophages, single-celled organisms that consume electromagnetic radiation. At the present rate, the Earth will be thrown into a new Ice Age in 30 years, which is why all the nation's scientists have banded together under the leadership of Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) to come up with a solution. Grace, who teaches middle school science but has a doctorate in molecular biology, is drawn into their work because of theories he proposed in his dissertation, and he soon becomes one of the leading researchers on astrophages. The scientists eventually discover that one star, trillions of miles from Earth, appears to be immune to the astrophages, so they determine to launch a mission to that star to study it and find out why.

Grace ends up serving as the chief science officer on the mission, although the how and why of his appointment to that position is not fully revealed until the final third of the film. The bulk of the story takes place on the Hail Mary, the ship that takes Grace deep into the cosmos to try to figure out how the astrophages can be stopped. Once there, he discovers that there is an alien ship in the vicinity whose lone occupant soon makes contact. Sure, there are some major impediments to Grace and Rocky working together, namely that they communicate in entirely different languages and can only survive in completely different environments, but those problems are eventually resolved by Grace figuring out enough of Rocky's words to create a computer program to interpret his speech and give him a voice (supplied by James Ortiz, who was also Rocky's lead puppeteer) and Rocky creating the space equivalent of a hamster wheel that allows him to roll around inside the Hail Mary while still being in the atmosphere that can sustain him.

On paper, much of this shouldn't work, but almost all of it does. Similarly, nothing about the previous films of co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller suggests that they could pull off a movie of this scale that balances ecological sci-fi with emotionally wrought buddy comedy, but they do. Their having directed the manic computer-animated movies Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and The Lego Movie (2014) and the raunchy comedies 21 Jump Street (2012) and 22 Jump Street (2014) leaves no impression that they could manage the material in Project Hail Mary, but they do so quite capably (it makes one wonder what they did to get fired from Star Wars prequel Solo, which Ron Howard eventually took over). The major action sequences, which benefit substantially from the scale of the IMAX screen, are tense and effective, especially since the film has built so much emotional connection between Grace and Rocky. The flashback structure, on the other hand, isn't nearly as effective as it is likely meant to be, especially in the way it holds out on certain revelations until they no longer really matter. As a whole, though, Project Hail Mary works exceedingly well, reminding us that big science fiction epics can be all the better for wearing their hearts on the sleeves.

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