Passengers

True to our nature, since the 1950s, when humans first started exploring space, we have created and left some 13,000 pieces of space junk moving around in our orbit. In that spirit, we can add this piece of turgid romance flotsam to the solar system's floating garbage pile. Morten Tyldum's film is idiotic, dull and intensely laborious in the process.

We're in trouble very close to the beginning of Passengers, shortly after space colonialist Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) gets awakened by accident from his sleep pod, some 90 years too early in the ship's journey to a new planet, known as "Homestead II" (presumably Homestead I has already been filled to bursting with obnoxious space tourists). With no means of returning to hypersleep, and no one else to hang out with other than an android bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen), Jim quickly descends into fifth-year frat boy levels of crapulence, eschewing pants altogether and lying in a pile of his own filth with a puffy beard that would make a lumberjack proud.

Rather than be doomed to a life of lonely pointlessness, and having exhausted all entertainment options on board the ship (one of which enables Pratt to employ his now-signature "dance off" repertoire), Jim contemplates suicide via deep space vacuum before discovering the beautiful Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a lovely writer happily ensconced in her fully functional sleep pod. Entranced, Jim reads her stuff (most of which sounds utterly unremarkable, but that's the kind of film this is) and becomes fully captivated, finally going against his better judgment and intentionally sabotaging her pod in order to forcibly wake her up and give himself a chance at love.

Naturally, the film doesn't let Jim get away clean with his moral lapse, at least at first, especially after Aurora finds out the horrible truth rather it employs the time-honored sitcom staple when the wacky male character lies through his teeth in order to win the attention of the beautiful broad: It gives him a chance at redemption. This comes shortly after the fourth member of the cast appears, a crew member we shall dub Plot Device (Laurence Fishburne), who shows up just in time to explain what's been going wrong with the ship -- it's experiencing major malfunctions that desperately need to be repaired before going supernova -- and to give these two crazy, mixed-up kids some pearls of wisdom about caring for each other despite Jim's unforgivable selfishness.

Some of this might possibly have worked, had the film taken the time to provide us with characters we actually cared about, but instead it sees fit to give us little more than the star power of the two leads more or less unencumbered by any sort of "roles" they would have to create. Pratt is Pratt, give or take, with a bit more of a wounded conscience than we're used to seeing. Lawrence, meanwhile, bless her heart, tries to turn her wispy outline of a character into something resembling a flesh-and-blood form, but not even she can do much with lines like "Come back to me" and "Took you long enough to ask."

The film also suffers from indecisive direction and tone. In true Sony fashion, it feels as if the executives never got much beyond the initial elevator pitch ("two big stars are trapped alone together on a giant spaceship, and the woman goes swimming a lot"), and didn't bother much with fashioning a screenplay that carried any further weight. By the time we've gotten past the romance story of the first two acts, it already feels as if we've been in the theater for hours, and that's before any of the truly misguided maneuvers festoon the closing arc of the script like lumber-devouring barnacles.

What's worse, it subscribes to one of the phoniest and most blatantly sexist of all Hollywood maxims: No matter what horrible thing the man has done, the woman is expected to forgive him entirely, because she loves him anyway. The moral conundrum Jim faces near the beginning of the film -- whether it's better to suffer alone, or force someone else to be there with him -- gets excused by his heroic gestures afterward. While it's true, early on the film does take some pains to show Jim's anguish about what he has done, in the end, it refuses to penalize him for his sins.

Not to mention the dubious wisdom they both employ by developing an intense romantic relationship with the only other member of the community awake and sentient. Had things gone sour, the two bitter exes would have been forced to endure each other's existence as their sole companion for the rest of their lives. There may be many bad marriages here on this Earth, but that truly sounds like a fate worse than death.

MovieStyle on 12/23/2016