Project Hail Mary review: Ryan Gosling's space epic is 'a mind-stretching sci-fi' ★★★★☆

This new blockbuster starring Gosling as a solo astronaut trying to save humanity is over two-and-a-half hours long – yet manages to be 'zippily entertaining' throughout.

From Star Wars to Dune, from Avatar to Independence Day, most science-fiction blockbusters come down to the question of how skilful the heroes are with guns and swords. But there are a few sci-fi films that value brains over brawn. One of the best recent examples is Ridley Scott's The Martian (2015), which was based on a novel by Andy Weir and scripted by Drew Goddard. Now Goddard has adapted another of Weir's novels, Project Hail Mary, and, again, it features a lone scientist thinking his way through a problem in the depths of space.

The difference between the two films is that this one is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who opt for the "Everything is Awesome" perkiness that characterised their defining hit, The Lego Movie. With a leading man, Ryan Gosling, who can't resist showing off his goofball charm and all-round Kenergy, Project Hail Mary is surprisingly shiny and fun for a story about the potential extinction of the human race.

Gosling plays Ryland Grace, who is first seen waking up on a vast spaceship that's streaking towards a distant star – the only two other crewmembers have died en route. Several years in an induced coma have fogged his memory, but he gradually recalls that he is a biologist who was recruited (by the dry-witted Sandra Hüller) for the titular Project Hail Mary.

Alien microbes known as "Astrophages" are gobbling up the sun's radiation, which means that the Earth will soon be too cold to support life. It's Grace's job to find out why one particular star is unaffected by the Astrophages, and to send the secret back home, even if his ship doesn't have enough fuel to get back home itself.

Luckily, he's not quite alone. It turns out that another spacecraft is on the same mission from a different planet, and it, too, has just one living occupant, a crab-like alien made of lumps of stone (a puppet, with some digital tweaking). The........

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