A waste in space.

Rating: 4/10 (22 July 2017)

Set aboard a massive ship on a interplanetary flight, Passengers may seem like a sci-fi movie but it's actually a chick flick; Guy gets girl, guy looses girl, guy gets girl back. Passengers crashes and burns on the contrived devices used to weave these familiar threads together.
In terms of set design the movie is spectacular to behold, and but it's all a waste of space. We are looking at tens of millions of dollars of scenery in which to stage a ten cent romance. Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence do all the things that couples do, share breakfast, go dancing, jogging, and eventually enjoy a fancy dinner dressed to the nines. Aside from one sexy spacewalking sequence, The setting doesn't make these events feel any more remarkable than they would have been on Earth.
As we near the final act, the ship starts to fall apart. Lawrence Fishbourne is shoehorned in as a mere plot device. Scruffy bearded and with a hungover stare, he looks as if he has just come off the street.
Passengers raises some intelligent questions about the human experience, but rather than answer them it chooses to focus on the lobotomized charm of star talent. You can hear this familiar Hollywood tune in your head as the actors goes through the motions of Nicholas Sparks material.