Review: PASSENGERS

Paka Diya Yaar Is Journey Ne!

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

What can be more tedious than watching someone eat breakfast in a spaceship alone? Someone drinking whiskey, of course! Jim is on an intergalactic travel ship in 120 years of hibernation when a malfunction wakes him up earlier than the other passengers. He in turn wakes up Aurora to keep him company. A couple of moral moments apart their journey is like really pathetic facebook update of other people’s travels.

Main Review:

What would a girl and a boy do on a gigantic space cruise ship alone? Play basketball, dance the advanced Dance Dance Revolution, eat food at specialty restaurants, drink at the bar, swim, jog, make love, and yes, walk outside the ship in space… If that list is boringly obvious, make the girl Jennifer Lawrence and the boy Chris Pratt. Even then, Matt Damon’s attempt to grow potatoes on Mars when he’s left alone on the red planet in The Martian, seems so much more interesting.

A twist needs to be told, of course: Her waking up was not a malfunction. Is this a plot spoiler? Hardly. You actually hope that the revelation will do something. You will be disappointed. She jogs, he tinkers. She swims, he tinkers. She cries, he tinkers…

But the ship begins to malfunction and the two passengers get temporary help in the shape of Laurence Fishburne. It is then up to Jim, an ordinary mechanic to help resolve the crisis of the ship falling apart. This part is so unbelievable, the groans from the audience should have been enough to tear that ship (and it’s 4998 passengers and 250 odd crew members still in happy hibernation) apart.

Jennifer Lawrence is luminous in the film but she’s got the part of damsel in distress and there’s only so much she is allowed to do: look good in an alleged futuristic swimsuit and without clothes. But the film is rated for family viewing so the images are not too explicit.

Chris Pratt does a decent job as a creepy, selfish stalker who does something so heinous, you cannot picture him as the perfect boyfriend. In fact, there are times you wish Jennifer Lawrence would turn into the alien (remember the Sigourney Weaver film?) and haunt him and kill him slowly, making this into a horror film. Now that cat and mouse game on a gigantic cruise ship traveling through space would have been a more watchable movie…

When the movie is so dull, the only thing left for an audience to do is wonder: who made the beds? Chris Pratt is a slob when he’s alone. How come the beds are made when there are two of them?  

 

(the review appears on nowrunning dot com)