That's the best way to sum up Project Hail Mary, a good chunk of whose runtime is a two-hander between biologist Ryland Grace ...

Ryland Grace is having a very bad day. Ryland is a middle school science teacher and he just woke up in outer space.

Grace skips Earth to rescue Rocky, sends the Taumoeba cure home via four Beetle probes, and ends up teaching alien children on Erid.