Ryan Gosling’s $248 million Amazon movie is an outer-space blast

Now entering the pantheon of lost-and-alone movies is “Project Hail Mary,” a hugely entertaining — and just plain huge — surprise during a depressing month that’s typically Hollywood’s dumping ground for wince-worthy trash.

It hits you like an asteroid watching what amounts to a bona fide summer blockbuster smack dab in the middle of March, just when we’re sick of hearing about the same 10 Oscar movies over and over again.

Wiping the cinematic slate clean, Amazon’s big-swing is an old-school outer-space adventure with a contemporary attitude and enough creative touches to lend it a new-car smell.

It’s a lovably weird story with hopelessly stranded hints of “The Martian,” “Life of Pi” and “Castaway.” And, yes, there’s a Wilson — albeit an actually alive one.

The wizards of odd here are directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller of “The Lego Movie” and the “Spider-Verse” series. I’ve never met them, but their work suggests they’re the sort of guys you’d wanna meet in the William Shatner autograph line at a Star Trek convention.

Their quirky latest has heart, sci-fi thrills, funny jokes and stupendous special effects worthy of its staggering price tag — reportedly $248 million. That’s more than some island nations’ GDPs. Yet even though it ranks among the most expensive movies ever made, “Mary” is cozy and genuinely adorable.

The film’s enormous appeal starts with star Ryan Gosling.

Not that Gosling needs to be sold as a leading man at this stage in his career, but this is the first time I’ve been convinced he really is one.

He’s funny, obviously. The actor always comes prepared with that Paul Rudd prankster energy. Or, rather, Ken-ergy. And while he’s been plenty emotional in the past in films such as “The Notebook,” “La La Land” and “Blade Runner 2049,” gravitas hasn’t been his forte. He’s a goof.

Finally, his “Project Hail Mary” character Ryland Grace lets Gosling explore the full palate of his abilities. The stakes for Grace are much greater than sky-high. He has the unenviable task of saving humanity from an existential threat while solo in the vast cosmos far from home.

At the film’s start, he wakes up from a medically induced coma on a spaceship, like Ripley in “Aliens” only with fewer exploding abdomens, shaggy, confused and years away from Earth. The other two crewmen are dead.

Flashbacks throughout show how Grace was plucked from obscurity as a high school physics teacher to help on a top-secret government effort — Project Hail Mary, run by Eva (Sandra Hüller).

The German actress is the movie’s secret sauce. Her role isn’t giant, but she gives Eva more mystery and moral complexity than most other actresses could manage.

Eva’s mission is to stop some unexplained organisms called astrophage from “eating” the sun. The “red dots”’ appetite has given humans about 30 years left to live. Tops. But the group has discovered a unique planet 13 lightyears away from Earth that’s somehow immune to their devastation.

Clearly that’s where Grace has been sent to figure out how this world is surviving, but the circumstances of why he’s actually there are blurry till the end. The twist is a meaty one.

This is when things get cute. While attempting to complete his research mission, Grace makes first contact with an alien.

When the two species have their initial encounter, Lord and Miller mine Spielbergian chills that bring to mind “E.T.” But they also treat it as an intergalactic Tinder date. It’s silly.

The second half of “Project Hail Mary” becomes a man-and-alien buddy comedy that will have the upcoming”Mandalorian and Grogu” sweating.

His extraterrestrial pal is Rocky, a spider-like rock creature whose world is also being ravaged by the astrophage. Together, maybe they can stop the infestation.

Rocky is the lovechild of R2-D2 and the Grand Canyon; a clay-colored, curious, beep-boop rascal whose speech Grace eventually is able to translate. Before we get to know him, Rocky is a little freaky. Good on the designers for making a movie and not just a lucrative Christmas stocking stuffer.

The little guy is, I’ll admit, somewhat farfetched. As is how fast Grace figures how to interpret his clicky language, as are the rapidly rattled off scientific explanations for astrophage and the experiments the duo conduct. “Project Hail Mary” makes “The Martian” look like a Scientific American cover story.

I didn’t really mind the ridiculousness, though. The film is so much fun. It tugs at the heartstrings often and Rocky is so brilliantly animated to the point of complete believability. Gosling is great. 

And, during a moment in which movies tend to be either cynically corporate or bleaker than a black hole, “Project Hail Mary” dares to be about that once-great driver of drama: Friendship.