Lawrence gets her shirt off.

Rating: 4/10 (12 March 2017)

Not being a Social Justice Brownshirt forced to run in screaming outrage from any film, play or book which contains a plot element I find knee-jerkingly offensive, I was perfectly able to settle in to enjoy Passenger's traditionally uninspiring tale of "girl meets slightly rapey boy, jumps boys bones, falls out with boy, gets rescued by boy and lives with boy happily ever after" in space.
Well, I say "enjoy", actually the plot is laughably thin and one- dimensional, the obviously thorny issue of the boy awakening the chick he has the hots for to her irredeemable doom is disappointingly briefly addressed and the otherwise bland fairy tale romance is tedious to say the least. It's a pity, actually, because the issues raised by the space- prisoner's dilemma of who, if anyone, to wake from the vessel's choice of thousands and condemn to his fate, either to stave off loneliness, start a family, or to help extricate himself from this sentence of a lifetime alone was an intriguing one, and could have made for a deeply interesting and thoughtful film.
Unfortunately the writers decided not to go that route. It's possible they toyed briefly with the notion of turning their work into a space-parody since the comedy robot bartender, played by Michael Sheen was by far the most human of the on-board characters, and certainly the fortuitous appearance and immediate demise of the token black dude is well within ironic boundaries.
I must admit that despite not really rating Jennifer Lawrence as an actress - given that her range of facial expressions only barely exceeds that of Noomi Rapace, who, as we can all tell, has had her musculi faciei surgically disconnected - I was really quite impressed by her emotive performance. She genuinely managed to look both upset and slightly worried on occasion. Well I was convinced.
Unfortunately, despite the lush, if somewhat scientifically unlikely, design of the ship and its on-board technologies I found the film simply boring. When it got to the (inevitable) point at which Jennifer Lawrence was forced to strip off due to the intense heat of the ship's exploding engines I couldn't help barking with laughter thinking of that brilliant moment in Galaxy Quest's Star Trek parody when Alan Rickman snidely comments to Tim Allen "I see you managed to get your shirt off!"
So at that point I turned off Passengers and re-watched Galaxy Quest instead. I recommend you do the same. I give Passengers a 4 for "pretty, but not worth finishing".