With “Project Hail Mary,” the directing duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, working with the star power of Ryan Gosling, have made what could be described as TV-dinner sci-fi. There is a slight warmth to their reheated meal that elicits a few tears, even with a hint of overcooked cellophane.

An adaptation of The Martian author Andy Weir’s same-titled novel, “Project Hail Mary” follows Dr. Ryland Grace (Gosling) as he travels through space alone toward a distant star that he hopes holds the key to saving life on Earth. Along the way, however, he meets a surprising extraterrestrial being whose world is under threat as well. Their journey makes the expected visual nods to sci-fi classics and attempts to offer some blockbuster spectacle. But the harder the film tries, the more one feels pulled along rather than effortlessly transported.

Indeed, in a dimmer star’s hands, you could more acutely discern that former sensation. But Gosling, through his wit and charm (not to mention his attuned sense of physical comedy), keeps things moving, even when this sappy film not only narratively retraces its steps but also tells viewers exactly what they should be feeling at every millisecond.

This is a non-linear story that opens quite abruptly with an unkempt Grace awakening from a deep sleep. His muscles are limp, and his brain is foggy; he squirms, crawls, and climbs – as though he were being reborn – through his ship, where he discovers the bodies of his two dead comrades. He doesn’t quite remember their names, how he knows them, or even how he ended up aboard this spacecraft.

Consequently, much of this film oscillates between Grace’s realisation of the purpose of his mission and the earthly events that led to this moment. For the latter arc, we learn that Grace, a disgraced scientist turned schoolteacher, has been recruited by Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) to save the world. Grace, along with many other scientists, has been told that an infection affecting the sun is causing the celestial body to die. In the next few decades, life on the planet will cease to exist.

It’s worth noting that these flashback scenes are the strongest in the film. Despite his movie star resume, Gosling isn’t necessarily the kind of lead you want solely shouldering the load of a blockbuster film. He plays so well off other actors (there’s a reason his biggest hits are often opposite co-stars capable of conjuring deeper meaning and greater spontaneity from him) that he often comes off as limited when he’s alone.

In “Project Hail Mary,” therefore, he accrues entertaining mileage playing with Lionel Boyce, who plays the initially intimidating government officer Steve Hatch. Even when a head-scratching needle-drop of Miriam Makeba’s “Pata Pata” happens during a carefree shopping trip to a hardware store, they maintain an endearing comedic rapport. The same goes for Gosling and Hüller. The German actress’s coy, deadpan deliveries are particularly inviting. In a film so intent on telegraphing everything, her keen withholding allows for the kind of mystery that permits a sci-fi film’s emotionality to hit with greater force.

Ironically, the film finds less to work with during its space sequences. To be clear, these sections aren’t lacking because of the high level of disbelief they must maintain. After all, during Grace’s interstellar travels, he encounters an alien ship whose sole survivor is a golem he affectionately names Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz). Despite their language barrier, the two eventually become friends, inspiring the movie to turn into the kind of unlikely buddy comedy that recalls Lord and Miller’s work on both “Jump Street” movies. Gosling is a fantastic scene partner, granting us pathos for a faceless alien character by virtue of his unique ability to offer everything of himself to land his partner’s set-up.

The film, instead, struggles when it departs from these grounded moments of an unassuming man becoming an unlikely hero to reach for grandiosity. There’s an overwhelming, heartwarming moment toward the end, when Lord and Miller have us in the palm of their hands. But then the film hurdles past that, making the last fifteen minutes a series of uplifting conclusions whose every beat forces that incredible emotion to recede. It’s an enjoyable, yet overly familiar, excursion. By disavowing narrative and aesthetic boundaries, “Project Hail Mary” struggles to become boundless.