Both Sci-fi and Romance Clichés

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2017)

I guess this is one of those films that a guy would see because it is set in space and a girl would see because of the romance. Okay, maybe I am being a little stereo-typical, but this is one of those films that seems to be trying to appeal to two types of audiences. Mind you, I would be much more inclined to see a film like Passengers as opposed to La La Land, but then again I suspect that there are a lot of women out there that are more included to see La La Land as opposed to Passengers, but once again I am just speculating.
The film is about a colony ship that is spending 120 years traveling from Earth to a new colony, and everybody on the ship is asleep. About a third of the way there the ship hits a massive asteroid belt and causes some systems to malfunction. At about the same time one of the passengers awakes thinking that he is almost there only to discover that he still has 90 years to go. The problem is that he cannot get back to sleep. This is were temptation arises as he can't access the crew quarters, and thus is left alone with a bartender robot, so he decides to wake a rather attractive woman up as well. Everything turns out okay until she discovers that he woke her up on purpose, and all the while the ship's systems are continuing to malfunction (and without access to the crew's quarters there is no way they can find out what the actual problem is).
In a way this film is pretty predictable – it is a romance anyway so it works on the principle of boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy does something heroic and they fall in love forever. Okay, one can suggest that by waking her up he did actually save the entire ship, and I suspect that she eventually realises that. However, being stuck alone on a ship for the rest of your life may seem great, but it would push human tolerance to the absolute limit. The other thing is that while they are trying to be scientifically accurate, one does wonder what exactly exists at the end of the rainbow – we are speaking of some incredibly vast distances here, and with the rate at which history moves, by the time they arrive everything and everybody they know will be long gone.
The other thing is that nobody actually knows first of all if the planet is inhabitable (it would take years to get a scout ship there and then years to get any information back, if the scout ship actually arrives). However, in the end what we have is more of a science-fiction romance than anything really serious, and the practicalities of such a trek is probably not meant to get in the way. However, I simply cannot help but think that this whole process is little more than a massive con by a corporation to milk millions of dollars out of unsuspecting individuals (and the crew are basically a bunch of convicts that are placed in there to give the illusion of a legitimate enterprise).