If you’re looking for a funny, thrilling, and lighthearted movie to help power you through the last month of the semester, look no further than Amazon MGM Studios’ sci-fi flick, “Project Hail Mary.”

The family-friendly space exploration film, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — who co-created “The Lego Movie,” “22 Jump Street,” and the “Spider-Verse” franchise — is emotional, intense, and visually beautiful. Most importantly, it’s not part of a franchise and makes an optimistic argument not only for humanity’s role in the universe, but for the future of one-off films in an industry oversaturated by franchise blockbusters.

“Project Hail Mary,” based on the 2021 novel of the same name written by Andy Weir, who also wrote “The Martian,” stars the electric and hilarious Ryan Gosling as middle school teacher and disgraced molecular biologist Ryland Grace.

At the film’s start, Grace wakes from a coma on a spaceship stranded several light-years from Earth, with little to no recollection of who he is or why he is there. Grace, the sole survivor on the spaceship Hail Mary, struggles with unraveling not only his identity but also the purpose of his initial mission: To find a way to save Earth’s dying sun. 

The name of the film’s titular spacecraft, Hail Mary — explained in the film not as a reference to the Catholic prayer, but rather to the term in American football — underscores the urgency of Grace’s long-shot mission for all of humanity. Flashback scenes reveal scientists discovering Earth’s sun being eaten by alien microorganisms called “astrophages.” The government scopes out Grace, a teacher and biologist whose controversial research ironically pertains to the problem at hand, although it once got him ostracized from the scientific community. 

Best of all, “Project Hail Mary” is full of Grace’s dry humor, personality, and knack for shrugging off authority, which Gosling perfectly embodies.

“I put the ‘not’ in ‘astronaut,’” Grace says at a table of scientists and government agents trying to convince him to go on the mission. “I’ve never done a space walk — I can’t even moonwalk!”

In another flashback scene, Grace gets sidetracked while purchasing items for a makeshift science experiment when he begins bowling with the items in a store aisle.

The heart of the film is Grace’s relationship with an endearing, sometimes equally hilarious rock-like alien he meets and subsequently names “Rocky,” his only companion on the isolated mission. As it turns out, Rocky is trying to save his own planet, Erid, from astrophages that are eating its dying sun, leading him and Grace to team up and attempt to solve the problem for their respective species. 

Both of Grace’s professions, molecular biologist and teacher of schoolchildren, come to life in his interactions with Rocky. Grace tries to understand Rocky’s biology and also to teach the childlike alien simple human behaviors, such as a thumbs-up indicating positivity — although, despite Grace’s best efforts, Rocky always responds with a thumbs-down, presumably the Eridians’ (or just Rocky’s) way of communicating the same thing. 

The visual aesthetics of “Project Hail Mary” are stunning and fitting for a space exploration film, filled with bizarre planets and colorful action sequences. 

Daniel Pemberton’s score emphasizes the themes of hope, isolation, humility, and connection across the vast galaxy. It also pays tribute to past space films, with sounds of organ pipes reminiscent of Hans Zimmer’s “Interstellar” score (2014) and references to John Williams’ iconic five-note motif from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), a film about humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrials. 

Though it can verge on being too silly at times, the film avoids becoming overly intense or dark, balancing the sardonic, doomsday-like tone of government agent Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) and the general nature of Grace’s mission, with the humor of his and Rocky’s relationship. Notably, it contains almost no expletives, making it one of the rare recent PG-13-rated films suitable for a family to watch. 

Overall, “Project Hail Mary” makes a strong mark as a non-franchise blockbuster movie. While the story and characters were based on Weir’s book, no other films have been made from it. In a film industry mostly dominated by movies set within the universes of other movies, audiences readily welcomed “Project Hail Mary.” Its opening weekend netted more than $140 million worldwide, making it the largest film opening of 2026 so far.

Perhaps much like the astrophages eating the sun, the film industry’s franchise blockbuster mania became too much for its own good. And, like the once-shunned and reluctant Ryland Grace, something that can help solve the problem is a return to non-franchise flicks that have also been kicked to the curb. Despite its minimal flaws, “Project Hail Mary” is a return to originality, boldness, and mainstream family-friendly media. Any moviegoer looking for those things would give this film — as Rocky would put it — an enthusiastic thumbs-down.