Fascinating and worthwhile sci fi film

Rating: 9/10 (21 May 2017)

This is a truly excellent science fiction film which does not have monsters, but instead tackles serious issues in a sensible manner. The film is set quite far in the future, when humans have already colonised a few other planets and starships are travelling across the Galaxy with humans spending a century or so in hibernation during the long interstellar voyages. (In this case, the starship passes the star Arcturus one third of the way on its journey.) The entire film is set in a particular starship owned by the Homestead Company on Earth, a horribly naff commercial enterprise which sends colonisers to its own commercially owned planets for settlement. There are 5000 colonists asleep on the ship, in addition to the crew who are also asleep, and the entire ship is on autopilot when it suffers a collision with a rocky body in space which damages it. Systems malfunctions begin to occur, and there is a single 'pod malfunction', whereby one of the colonists is awoken prematurely. He is played by Chris Pratt, who does a very good job of being an unambitious young engineer in search of a new life and adventure. He wanders around the gigantic starship and wonders why he is the only person awake, since the automatic announcement he received upon being awakened was that everyone was waking up now for the final months of their journey. The interior designs for the vast starship rooms are truly spectacular, as are the special effects of holograms of stewardesses, etc. Ghost of Stanley Kubrick, eat your heart out! If only 2001 could have been like this! I have never seen such magnificent art direction for a sci fi movie. The designer deserves an Oscar. A great many satirical touches are incorporated into the film, mocking the commercialism in a way which we can all appreciate and find amusing, and which will make many a travel agent blush (if travel agents have blood in their veins, that is). Pratt is horrified to discover that there has been a systems error and he is the only person awake on board the ship, which still has 90 years left to go of its voyage time. He spends a desultory year alone in the vast ship, becoming more and more depressed. There is no possibility of him putting himself back into hibernation, so he is irreversibly condemned to his lonely fate. As he wanders around looking at the faces of the other sleeping passengers, he is struck by the sight of a beautiful girl. He is tempted to wake her up for company, because he finds her irresistible, but he agonises over this for months, as it would mean condemning her to die on the ship, since neither he nor she could ever live long enough to survive to the end of the voyage. He has had one companion during all of this time, a robot bartender who looks human from the waist up and stands behind the bar pouring his whiskies and chatting to him amiably. This bartender robot is played absolutely brilliantly by Michael Sheen. His performance is in fact so amazing that it is the highlight of the film, surpassing even the spectacular sets in appeal. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that the man must be a genius. And one reason why he is so successful is that the script by Jon Spaihts is so superb that Sheen gets such wonderful lines that even a less talented actor could have scored with them. Finally, Pratt gives way to temptation and wakes the girl, who is played by Jennifer Lawrence. I must confess that I do not find Jennifer Lawrence at all beautiful, and I find that a problem in the story, since she is supposed to be so irresistible to Pratt. But then there is no accounting for taste. She does a good job of acting, so that she retains our interest for that reason. This unlikely and very ordinary couple then essentially are the story, until disasters begin to strike as the ship starts to deteriorate in a catastrophic manner. The attempts to save the ship and themselves preoccupy the young couple, and the events which ensue are extremely dramatic and harrowing. A crew member awakens because of another pod failure, but he only lives long enough to give Pratt his ID so that he can get into the command and control cabin. He then dies and the couple 'bury' him by ejecting him into space. At no point does this film become boring, despite the small cast. This is a thoroughly worthwhile sci fi film done on a grand scale in an intelligent fashion. It is extremely well done, and is a model of serious science fiction film-making.