Early previews for Passengers made it look like an intriguing successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey. With "America's sweethearts" Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt leading the cast, and The Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum behind the camera, Sony had all the makings of a crowd-pleasing Oscar contender not unlike last year's The Martian.
The finished product is about as far removed from all of that as possible. Sure, Pratt and Lawrence have chemistry, but the script goes completely off the rails with a third act so contrived that it all but sinks the entire production. In this case, "S.O.S." might as well stand for "Save Our Story."
Pratt stars as Jim Preston, a mechanical engineer who awakes 90 years prematurely on a mission to colonize a distant, earth-like planet called Homestead II. He spends a year playing basketball, setting high scores on a space-age version of the "Just Dance" video game, and confiding in Arthur (Martin Sheen), an android bartender and the only friendly face Jim has to interact with. After all that time in solitude, and a brush with death, Jim decides that he needs human company.
Lawrence stars as Aurora Lane, a writer from New York City. Together, she and Jim must find and fix a malfunction that threatens to destroy their spaceship and take the lives of 5,000 colonists.
For about ninety minutes of its barely-two-hour run time, Passengers is a perfectly passable movie. It's neither flashy enough to measure up with a blockbuster like Rogue One, nor is it intimate enough to pass for an indie in the vein of Duncan Jones's Moon. Pratt proves that he has the charisma to carry a film on his own; the first 30 to 45 minutes or so are arguably the film's best. From this point, Passengers continues to skate by based on the chemistry that he and Lawrence share. Then something happens to remind you that there's actually a plot at work. The solution to the central conflict is literally placed in the protagonists' hands, and the rest of the film plays out as safely and predictably as one could imagine. By the end, you'll feel as though you've just sat through the ultimate male fantasy, and then you'll ask yourself how in God's name a certain actor received billing for his role in this film.
I think the overall message of the film is something along the lines of "love the one you're with." That may be clear, but there has got to be a better story to tell with this concept. To be totally honest, Michael Bay's The Island comes to mind as something of a favorable example of the his & hers "fish-out-of-water" tale. Pratt and Lawrence remain as likable as ever, but they need a vehicle that doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator.
D+
