Above average sci-fi, but still mediocre

Rating: 5/10 (16 January 2017)

Is it supposed to be a romance or a sci-fi movie? I'm not into romance so can't comment much on that count, although it doesn't seem like a very compelling example of the genre.
If the latter, why on earth would you choose Arcturus - or any star, for that matter, least of all a red giant - for a slingshot manoeuvre? The energy gain from a slingshot comes from orbital angular momentum donated by the celestial body used - not its axial / spin momentum... If the red giant was orbiting, say, a neutron star or some other more massive object, then it might make some sense. But Arcturus has no companion star. And even if it did, you'd be at such great radius (because it's a red giant, with barely more mass than the Sun), a slingshot would take months, for a comparatively tiny gain in momentum.
However we're later informed that the ship is at 50% of light speed! At that kind of velocity, only a neutron star or black hole would be able to offer any significant speed boost, and a red giant would pass by in a matter of minutes, with the closest approach lasting mere seconds.
Throughout, we're shown a bright blue nebula in the sky, perhaps 30 AU away... but Arcturus is 36 LY away, while the nearest nebula (the Helix) is 700 LY away! Besides which, if the ship has taken 30 years to reach .5 C (it's powered by an ion engine, which is still firing throughout the movie so the ship is still accelerating), then it surely can't be much more than 18 LY out from Sol - it couldn't possibly have reached Arcturus in the 30 years since its departure. Much less any nebula..
The skydome palette is totally blue. Blue is actually a nice choice, cinematographically, since it provides a good contrast range and bloom from bright light to black, helping stars to 'pop' while maintaining the impression of depth and distance. However in reality, red is more likely to dominate, since it is subject to less dissipation, and most stars are red dwarfs, but also, whatever their class, they're progressively far, far away and all light sources get more red-shifted the further away they are. Plus the nebula - if that's what it's supposed to be - should be predominantly hydrogen which gives them their characteristic red / orange hue. Not blue. The plane of the Milky Way from space is an awesome and colourful spectacle, and might've found pride of place here, but no, we get meaningless blue splodges...
In one cliff-hanger scene, the ship's centrifuge momentarily brakes (negative torque must've been applied since angular momentum is conserved), disabling the artificial gravity and causing the water in a swimming pool to float up into a ball - which is a nice touch, however a swimmer in such a scenario would be squeezed out of the ball by the water's intrinsic tension and higher (than human) density, not sucked helplessly into the center.
All of which should by any rights be moot, since the initial cause of all the technical problems is a large asteroid strike. The plasma shield meant to protect the ship from such strikes is a nice idea, but plasma is simply ionised gas, so to destroy even very small and slow asteroids it'd have to be millions of degrees Kelvin, if not orders hotter... yet the ship is travelling at .5 C! A 10 tonne lump of anything at that speed will have an impact energy of 4.3 trillion Joules! The entire ship would've been instantly vaporised! Plasma shield? The whole ship would've been turned into plasma! Despite all this, given Hollywood's usual contemptuous regard for sci-fi, this isn't half as bad as any of the other recent offerings, and not nearly as imbecilic as Denis Villeneuve's Arrival.
All in all, good performances, sets, and styling, and worth a cinema ticket, but won't leave any lasting impression.