'Project Hail Mary' review: Ryan Gosling carries the film

In "Project Hail Mary," Ryan Gosling plays Dr. Ryland Grace, who wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. His Rip Van Winkle beard suggest he’s been asleep for years, and he’s the only life form aboard. As Grace regains his memories, seen in flashbacks, he pieces together that he’s mankind’s last hope for survival.

"Some people are failures," Grace remembers saying on Earth. "Some people don’t rise to the occasion."

We’re pretty sure he will, though, in this companion piece to 2015’s "The Martian," the Matt Damon vehicle (directed by Ridley Scott). Both films are based on novels by onetime computer programmer Andy Weir, both have been adapted by screenwriter Drew Goddard ("Cloverfield"), and both fall into the niche known as hard sci-fi, a genre that prizes scientific accuracy and plausibility. Like its predecessor, "Project Hail Mary" hangs its fate on a star — a human one — who must carry the movie almost entirely alone. Luckily, Gosling is more than up to the task.

Gosling brings an Everyman’s vulnerability to the role of Grace, a brilliant scientist who became a middle school teacher. He knows Earth has about 30 years until our sun is devoured by a parasite called astrophage — but what can one do? Enter Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), one of those humorless world-government types, who has a copy of his old thesis and a hunch that the author might have hero potential. After agreeing to do some lab work, Grace discovers that the origins of astrophage lie on Tau Ceti, a star 12 light years away. And it’s a one-way journey.

At least I think that’s the mission; if you understand all the details then you should write a thesis, too. But directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the savvy duo behind "The Lego Movie," know that most of us came for a good old-fashioned adventure story. (They filmed it in IMAX, and it’s worth seeing that way.) Our modern-day Robinson Crusoe soon meets his Friday, an alien from the planet Erid, who looks a bit like a five-legged rock. He is also — in a very smart move — not CGI. Operated and voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz, the little creature dubbed Rocky becomes Gosling’s co-star, and they form a buddy chemistry that’s infectious and sometimes moving. "Words of encouragement," the literal-minded Rocky tells Grace before a dangerous task. (They learn to communicate thanks to something like Google Translate.)

If Alfred Hitchcock was right that a film is only as good as its villain, then "Project Hail Mary" falls a little short: It doesn’t have one. The problems of physics and space-time have their appeal, but the absence of a living, breathing antagonist is sometimes noticeable. Here again, though, Gosling carries the day: Grace’s enemy is his own weakness. That story, the human one, is what’ll stay with you when the mission is over.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com