Passengers -- a review

You heard of the mile high club, then just think of this as being the million miles away club. 

Passengers is a science fiction film that tries hard to be an intelligent SF story, one that deals with issues more than people shooting ray guns and whatnot. And certainly, when you hire an actress the caliber of Jennifer Lawrence--an Oscar winner, no less--one would expect a degree of gritty drama to be served with this heaping pile of space opera. Yet Passengers falls way short of being anything more than a popcorn flick. That’s not necessarily a bad thing--Passengers isn’t a horrible movie, not by any means, but in falling short of properly dealing with its storyline, it becomes just another mediocre flick.

Chris Pratt, best known for his roles in Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World (both films I enjoyed immensely) co-stars here as a passenger on board what’s known as a sleeper ship. Outer space is extremely vast, and it will take many years to travel from solar system to solar system at the present slow-as-molasses speeds (there’s no easy-fix tech to fall back on here, like warp speed in Star Trek, or hyperspace in Star Wars), so the reasoning is that we will build vast ships that will put people to “sleep” in the sense that they will hibernate throughout the long journey and wake up, still young, at the end of the trip.  

Sandra Bullock never had to deal with this in her space movie! 

But something goes wrong for Pratt’s character, who wakes up while still in mid-journey. His fellow passengers, along with the crew are still asleep in their pods, leaving him alone aboard a huge empty vessel with only a robotic bartender (Michael Sheen) to talk to. Pratt’s character does something controversial, an act that goes against the good-guy grain that he’s played in recent films, but instead of making this the center point of the film, only basic lip service is paid while Passengers devolves into a standard popcorn flick with the heroes having to try and save the day in a mundane climax.

And while this occurs, all is forgiven, which feels like a major cop out. Again, the hiring of Lawrence, a talented actress who held her own onscreen with the likes of Robert DeNiro and Christian Bale, makes one think that Passengers is going to be something more than it appears: which is a good, meaty drama that just happens to take place in outer space. Instead, we get more of the same gee-whiz bang-up science fiction spectacle. As I’ve stated before, Passengers isn’t a terrible movie--it’s not only watchable but entertaining in some spots--but in falling short of expectations, it becomes a major disappointment that utterly wastes the talents of one of the cinema’s shining stars.  --SF