Yet another reason not to trust the Tomatometer, this one's worth seeing

Rating: 7/10 (23 March 2017)

This is a very creative science fiction movie about a spacecraft come automated cruise ship that's headed for a distant planet with 5000 passengers and 258 crew members aboard in hibernation. The plan is for the travelers to be awakened once the ship is within 4 months of its destination Homestead II, where each will be given the opportunity to "begin again" as "pioneers" in the less crowded environs of a new world. The film deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for its Production Design; its Original Score was also Oscar nominated.
The ship, its design, exterior and interior are a visual feast to behold, and its operations are beautifully imagined. The concept of transporting human beings a great distance from Earth by having them sleep - kept from aging during a decades-long journey in some sort of chamber - is not a new one, but the idea that the vehicle of transport could be a dream machine of this caliber is a new one, at least to this reviewer. The result is a magnificently realized luxury liner - complete with class distinctions - in space.
The problem is that barely 30 years into its 120-year trip the computer controlled ship encounters a larger asteroid field than its shields were designed to withstand. The resulting damage, which for the most part is automatically 'healed' by the ship's systems, causes one passenger - Chris Pratt plays Jim Preston, a tradesman aka mechanic in (essentially) the steerage class - to be awakened.
Preston is surprised to find he's the only one awake, and it's through him that we see all of the ship's features including instant food and a plethora of entertainment options. He's thrilled to finally find someone to talk to, even if it's just an android bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen plays an integral role in the story). But Preston is despaired because there isn't any way for him to get into the ship's control room or restart his sleep chamber, so he's destined to die alone long before the destination.
So lonely is he that even after deciding to "live a little" by breaking in to the ship's first class amenities (like suite accommodations), Preston contemplates waking up another passenger - a beautiful writer he discovers in one of his low moments - to join him. After a year on the ship with only Arthur to share his time with - and months of wrestling with this ethical dilemma, Preston does in fact awake Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence).
What follows is another year on the ship during which Aurora, unaware that Preston had awakened her, finally accepts that her planned life is lost such that she allows herself to fall in love with him. They have a fairytale romance until she learns the truth, and Aurora's passion is turned to rage against Preston. She nearly kills him before realizing that he'd allow her to do it. The two then coexist on the ship, not talking with each other while agreeing to split time with Arthur as their only companion.
But the failing ship soon becomes the most pressing issue, and the latest emergency finally awakens a crew member. But Laurence Fishburne's character - who lives for only a few hours - is really just a plot device that provides information and a few other necessary elements in order that Aurora and Preston have to pull together to save themselves, the ship and its asleep crew and passengers. That's not to say that this part of the story comes off as too obviously contrived, until perhaps in retrospect (which might lead one to other troubling questions).
There's one more semi-suspenseful moment at the very end, which will probably satisfy most, even though Aurora never acknowledges that she was fated not to live the life she'd planned whether Preston had awakened her or not.