Grace was a middle-school science teacher and a former molecular biologist, and there is news that the Sun is dimming due to a fictional microorganism called astrophage eating up the sun's energy, and that in thirty years, the Earth will have cooled 10 to 15 degrees, destroying food sources, plant life, and making humans and animals extinct. Grace is recruited by government agent Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) because of a paper he wrote in the past, and has been working with scientists from all over the world to develop a solution to save the sun. Grace figures out that astrophage, coinciding with the development of an infrared line from the Sun to Venus called the Petrova line, breeds on Venus via their carbon dioxide and energy from the Sun. The mission to Tau Ceti, the only undimmed main star, is a one way one, as the spacecraft only has enough fuel to get there, but can send probes back to Earth with the crew's findings to save the world.
Grace wakes up on Hail Mary and gets his bearings, and he encounters an alien spacecraft, who is trying to communicate with him, sending him cannisters of materials. The alien spacecraft makes a tunnel walkway of xenon to allow Grace to enter, and he meets a spider-like alien with a rock-like body, who speaks by rubbing its limbs together, creating a musical speech, and Grace makes a computer translator program to be able to communicate more, with a voice (James Ortiz) to give the alien, named "Rocky," more of a human quality.
It turns out that Rocky, from the star system 40 Eridani, is the sole survivor of a mission to stop the astrophage. Neither Rocky nor Grace can survive in each other's atmosphere, so Rocky enters the Hail Mary in a small, pressurized glass ball as a spacesuit, and the two of them work together to save each other's worlds from extinction, and develop a bond as friends and roommates.
I really enjoyed this film a lot. At 156 minutes, it is long, and there were parts in the last third that I felt could have been cut down, where the story seemed like it was ending but kept going, so that part felt tedious. But I liked the mix of realistic science with humor, and Andy Weir, the novelist who wrote the Project Hail Mary book, also wrote The Martian, and there were similar feelings between the film adaptations, mainly with a man alone in space or on a planet, who has a biology background and uses his scientific knowledge and sense of humor to survive on his own and avoid losing his mind. Ryan Gosling has an easygoing charm as Grace and is fun to watch, and his relationship with Rocky (performed by Ortiz and several puppeteers as an animatronic robot) was funny and delightful, and got into real pathos as the story reached higher stakes. There are also funny ongoing gags of Grace wearing shirts with science puns on them, like a periodic table joke on one shirt, and the inspiration came from Val Kilmer's character in Real Science, who also wore a lot of funny pun shirts.
I really liked Hüller as Eva Stratt, a no-nonsense East German woman who is frank and honest with Grace about the risks to Earth if a solution is not found, and believes in him even when he has self-doubt and just sees himself as a lowly science teacher and not a hero. She is wryly funny, and especially shines in a karaoke scene during a moment of levity and steals the film from Gosling in that moment. I really liked her a lot in Anatomy of a Fall, so I was happy to see her back again.
Lionel Boyce, best known as part of the hip-hop collective Odd Future and as pastry chef Marcus on The Bear, delivers a strong supporting role as Carl, a government agent who acts as a security guard, who Grace takes a liking to and brings him along on his science experiments, including a fun moment of shopping on the government's expense account at a big box store and bowling down the aisles.
I would recommend this film if you like science fiction comedies that mix realism in science with humor, and obviously if you liked The Martian.
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