In “Project Hail Mary,” Ryan Gosling stars in a role that flexes his generational charisma to a degree that he can even have chemistry with a rock. This is no ordinary rock, mind you, as “Project Hail Mary” boasts one of the most infectious onscreen friendships in quite some time. 

The film follows Ryland Grace (Gosling), on an interstellar journey with no memory of how he ended up there, searching for a cure for a virus slowly killing stars across the galaxy, including the Sun. On this trip, Grace encounters a rock-like extra-terrestrial he eventually names “Rocky,” and the two work together to complete their objectives before returning home.

This relationship is the emotional core holding the film together. If the chemistry between the two lead characters wasn’t as believable as it is, the two-hour and 36-minute runtime might have been a complete chore to sit through. 

The performances from Gosling and James Ortiz as his alien friend Rocky do a lot of heavy lifting in keeping the characters and story compelling. However, the screenplay by Drew Goddard manages to stay consistently engaging while giving the two leads great material to work with.

The film is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who prior to this, have primarily worked in comedy and animation with films like “The Lego Movie,” “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” and the “21 Jump Street” movies. “Project Hail Mary” maintains their comedic touch throughout, and although the humor never undercuts the more emotional scenes, there are quite a few jokes, and most feel more “clever” and “cute” than “laugh-out-loud” funny.

Fortunately, those emotional scenes maintain a level of sincerity completely missing from many films today covering similar material with a similar tone. While many modern genre films at this scale (superhero films, mostly) feel the need to end almost every scene with a comedic button, regardless of the tone, “Project Hail Mary” doesn’t shy away from letting its characters actually spend time with the more painful emotions.

A majority of the film features Gosling acting against a non-human character, but this isn’t a one-man show: Sandra Hueller steals many scenes as the aptly named leader of the titular mission, Eva Stratt. Hueller plays Stratt in a manner that leaves one guessing just how far her sympathies towards Grace lie. (A stand-out scene involving karaoke makes this worth the price of admission alone.)

While this film manages to succeed in blockbuster filmmaking where many others in the same genre settle for mediocrity, “Project Hail Mary” is not as revelatory as its obvious passion for scientific discovery would make it seem. The story told here is compelling and entertaining, but not particularly complex, and the filmmaking feels safer than it should be.

Lord and Miller have previously made very self-aware and meta-textual work in “The Lego Movie” and the “Jump Street” films, so seeing how much more conventional “Project Hail Mary” is in its storytelling is a change of pace that feels slightly less interesting. They are still clearly talented filmmakers who have proved they can handle a more crowd-pleasing spectacle, but that almost felt like a given, considering their work writing and producing the highly successful “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” animated film series. 

This isn’t to take away from the technical feat achieved in directing a big-budget science fiction film set in space while using zero green screen shots. The film has plenty of visual effects, but not one shot in the final film used a green/blue screen, as the filmmakers wanted the locations and sets to be physical locations they could film in-camera. While this is all extremely impressive, Lord and Miller don’t make enough bold choices behind the camera during the less intense scenes.

Although the film is always exciting when it needs to be, the scenes of characters exchanging dialogue feel fairly stale in their framing and shot choices. The story bounces back and forth between scenes in the present with Grace and Rocky in space, and Grace in the past on Earth, preparing for the mission. The scenes on Earth are usually not as interesting, and it feels like the directors also felt that way while filming them.

“Project Hail Mary” isn’t going to change the landscape of blockbuster filmmaking, but it doesn’t need to. Films revolving around space exploration, like “2001: A Space Odyssey,” or “Interstellar,” tend to resonate with audiences in how seriously they take the great unknown and present it in as realistic a way as they can. “Project Hail Mary” doesn’t view the universe lightly or sacrifice verisimilitude, but instead highlights the beauty and life composing it.