The secret to Ryan Gosling is that there is more to his prettiness than meets the eye. We’ve known that since La La Land, in which he danced and sang like a seasoned Broadway star, and we learnt it again with Barbie, in which his Ken grows into the likeable face of manosphere insecurity. His latest role as Ryland Grace, a brilliant scientist who is slumming it as a high school teacher because his theory that alien life can exist without water has been rejected by his peers, is no exception.
His students want to know if it is true that the sun is dying. It is. But it’s not only ours: all of the suns in the observable universe appear to be dying, except for one that’s about 11 light years away from Earth. Which is why Grace is conscripted by the governments of the world to partake in a one-way space mission to see if what is saving that sun can save ours.
Based on the novel by Andy Weir whose previous page-to screen hit was The Martian, the movie tells all this essential exposition in flashback. Grace’s hair has grown like weeds when we first encounter him, waking from an induced coma onboard his space ship, where the Hal-like robot system relates the news that the other two crew members are dead. Then we’re back on Earth nearly a dozen light years previously where it has been discovered that a single-cell alien lifeform called “astrophage” is what’s bleeding stars of their energy. Soon the temperature on Earth will make a nuclear winter look like Provence in July.
Drew Goddard’s screenplay toggles between Grace’s past and present until we’re up to speed with how and why he got to the distant sun, which is where he encounters another lone traveller of the cosmos who has journeyed through space with the same intention as Grace: to save his own planet’s sun.
A challenge for all sci-fi films featuring aliens is coming up with a lifeform that not only looks like nothing on Earth, but also nothing like any of the aliens in Earth’s countless previous sci-fi movies. It is a challenge well met by co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who created a rock-like organism that moves like a spider yet somehow is also cuddly.
A bromance blooms between Grace and “Rocky”, as the human dubs him, and the two collaborate to save their respective planets.
As always Gosling is good company. So is Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of A Fall) as the deadpan “Project Hail Mary” – as the last-ditch space mission is named – manager who sends Grace on the mission to save his planet.
This is a film of ideas that touches on themes addressed by Interstellar which is, for my money, one of the best sci-fi films ever made. But even for my novice brain the science here is not as rigorous. The film falls more happily into the tropes of a buddy comedy or an action flick, complete with a nail-biting scene where the hero strains to reach a lever before his spaceship careens to destruction. But falling short – even far short - of one of the best sci-fi movies ever made still leaves plenty of room for a hearty recommendation, especially when it features Gosling at his lovable best.
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.