The perfect date movie

Rating: 8/10 (21 December 2016)

PASSENGERS is your textbook romantic film surrounded by breathtaking sci-fi. After so many survival films about one man only or one woman only, on an island or in space or against a shark, it's nice to see a survival film with two people and nobody else for a change. And with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence as the leads, this is a glossy adventure you can't keep your eyes off of.
The story is set onboard a spaceship transporting thousands of lives to a new life on another planet, it's supposed to be a 120-year journey but a malfunction happens that causes Chris Pratt's character, Jim's hibernation pod opening prematurely. Having spent a year all by himself there, Jim decides to intentionally get a woman to wake up as well, that woman is Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence). As they begin to unravel the mystery behind the malfunction, they fall in love, but when certain truths come to surface, they find their spaceship and their lives fall apart.
This is a sweet, sleek, romantic film, boy meets girl in a pod, boy wakes girl up, boy falls for girl, o and there's a bartender in a setting that looks kinda like the bar in the overlook hotel in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining." And just the million and one things that the spaceship can do is enough to make any sci-fi fan go, 'Whoah, that's super cool.'
When I was screening "Passengers," I was trying hard to find whether or not the film has some kind of underlying point that I may have been missing but really it's just a story about relationship, can it survive the cosmic ordeals at hand and can it also survive the lies. It is really essentially a romantic drama set in space, it doesn't get much simpler than that. Our future ambitions can't compare to our fear of loneliness.
To this day, I'm glad that writer/director James Gunn gambled on Chris Pratt as Star-Lord in his "Guardians Of The Galaxy" movie because otherwise we probably wouldn't have known that hidden gem, that leading man everyman quality that Pratt has, and it shows in this latest character, Jim. And Jennifer Lawrence is just as beautiful and sharp as ever, her quick spot on reactions, how she's there for the moment, is unparalleled. Yes it's got thrills, mystery, and spectacular imagery but when you strip it away, what you have is "Passengers" as this season's perfect date movie.