A Maddening Sci-Fi with Nothing to Say

Rating: 3/10 (21 December 2016)

Science Fiction is supposed to be about big ideas. It's supposed to utilize our highest aspirations, exhibit our biggest accomplishments, perhaps exploit our biggest fears. When we venture to a long time ago in a galaxy far away, go where no man has gone before or stumble into another edition of Thunderdome, it's expected that in these fantastical worlds, there's something important worth saying. Passengers seems to be saying anything, and I mean anything, is justified in the name of romance. Oh goody, a space adventure with the mentality of a mid-nineties romantic comedy. Bring on the creepy.
Chris Pratt plays...well he plays Chris Pratt, there's no point spelling out names because you won't remember them but you will remember two of the hottest stars in Hollywood today getting freaky amid lustrous starlight. Chris wakes up 90 years too early on a 120 year mission to a distant planet colony. Jennifer Lawrence joins him later and the two struggle to adjust to the prospect of living their entire adult lives in isolation and solitude.
Your opinion of this space adventure, glitches and all, is dependent on whether you can stomach one fateful decision on the part of Chris Pratt. That one decision colors the entire movie and can either force an audience member to actively rationalize everything afterward or squirm uncomfortably as things slowly fall apart. If you're the forgiving type, keep in mind that you will have to excuse a gauntlet of romantic and sci-fi clichés, propped up by funhouse mirror versions of everything you've seen before, splattered against the two most cardboard characters since Adam and Eve.
If you're a squirmer like me, you will not be enthused by the rudimentary character dynamics, forced sci-fi pablum and syrupy verbal diarrhea that bursts forth with the intensity of an oncoming meteor. Nor will you be happy by the fact that Jennifer Lawrence, an actress famous for playing a host of strong independent women, is stuck playing a space-age pinup whose big climax should come with a Schubert aria. To say nothing of Laurence Fishburne's character who speaks fluent exposition and, likely sizing up the room, decides to leave the movie without so much as a goodbye.
Make no mistake, you're stuck with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence for almost the entirety of this movie. And unlike one-man shows like Cast Away (2000) and Moon (2009), Passengers has absolutely nothing important to say about anything. It's a sleek-looking but dull and infuriatingly brainless movie that amazingly thinks the solution to every complex human relationship is live in the present, and the solution to every technical problem is, turn it off and turn it back on again.