Frustrating. Great premise, many well done parts, laziest script ever

Rating: 6/10 (11 January 2017)

The film look great. Lots of excellent special effects to make it convincing. Excellent cast. Compelling story. Very funny parody of what life may be like in the future. But boy does it ever fall flat as a board towards the end. And the ending is rushed, lame, pitiful and quite unbelievable.
The first hour is set up in a little quickly but it works, in spite of some stilted dialogue and scenes that should have been redone so that they didn't feel as if they were scripted and unnatural. But that's a minor quibble given how much I liked the premise and much of where the story was going. Pratt plays a man on a 120 year or so trip to another colony in space to live in luxury. This premise is completely absurd for many reasons (such as what you'll see in the movie.) During the journey he awakens very early after an asteroid strikes the ship and causes a malfunction. And he can't go back into hibernation (why... good question. Perhaps they thought the ship would never suffer the problem.) And he finds himself alone... very alone. And as a result he must make some difficult choices.
Jennifer Lawrence obviously appears in the film. She does a great job with what she's been handed. Michael Sheen as the bartender is perfectly cast although very little is done with him. The real problems are contrivance that begin to work their way into being positively annoying and dumb when "the twist" happens during the film that changes the course of everything. It's the kind of mistake that shouldn't have been made because the character wouldn't make such a mistake. And from there the film ends up traveling at light speed towards phony. It never recovers from that fatal misstep.
It's unfortunate that a film with the potential for so many great directions falls so flat in the second half. And for this reason I've given the film a very generous 6. You may really enjoy the atmosphere and the premise. But when it fails you may feel cheated by a very lazy effort. It's disappointing. Could have been a top film of the year.