Passengers Review An Almost Brilliant Sci Fi Romance. Passengers is two thirds of an amazing movie, a sci fi romance that gives its heart away too early and doesnt know what to do with itself after that. Thats a shame, because the deep seated melancholy of the movies first thirdand the idyllic, too good to be true romantic bliss that flowers in the secondare rare, delicate qualities in the science fiction were getting these days. Im afraid people will scoff at what they see as the silliness of Passengers even as they spend hours tripping over themselves to make a case for Rogue One as a deep, serious, anti fascist film. It is anti fascist, but only in the most facile, uninteresting ways. But if the best science fiction is less about outer space than inner spaceabout the ways pushing out forces us to confront the most fearful and fragile parts of ourselvesthen Passengers at least deserves a chance. The movie opens with a man waking up in a glass pod Chris Pratts Jim is a brawny mechanic whos one of several thousand Earth people on their way to a distant planet, where theyll start a new life. It takes a few hundred Earth years to get there, so everyone must sleep on the way. Mr. Peabody And Sherman Movie In Hd. But a pod malfunction has caused Jim to wake up 9. The poor guy went into hypersleep thinking hed eventually awaken to a lively, bustling social life on the ship, a space age ocean liner equipped with rec areas, an automat style breakfast area, and a glamorous futuristic retro art deco bar that wouldnt have looked out of place in the Chrysler Building circa 1. Instead, Jim wakes up alone. Its the bro bummer of a lifetime. So he wanders through the ship, trying to figure out how he might game the system and get back to sleep. Everything onboard is controlled by invisible, automated voicestheres no real human in sight, and no real human voice within earshot. Jim tries to get answers to his many questions, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. Its grimly funny very time he hears, I didnt understand that. Weve all been there. Theres only one person for Jim to talk to, and he isnt even a person. Arthur a sleek, gleaming Michael Sheen is a painstakingly well groomed android who looks, talks and listens like a bartender but whos really only programmed to do so. Jim spends hours at the bar, pouring out his loneliness. He gets drunk a lot and wears ugly shorts all the time. He grows a fat, rounded, deeply unflattering Yukon Cornelius beard. This is what straight guys do without the allegedly civilized influence of women, and the movie is in on the joke. But if Jims mopiness is played partly for laughs, his despair is genuine. Pratt is a good enough actor to convey both, and when Jim goes for a lonely space walkthe ship is outfitted with special Buzz Lightyear style suits for doing sohes both visibly overwhelmed by the wonder of the star dotted velvet around him and wrecked with despair because theres no one to share it with. And then suddenly, somehow, Jim is no longer alone. Theres a girl he likes, a smart, funny writer named Aurora just like the princess in Walt Disneys Sleeping Beauty, and shes played by Jennifer Lawrence, who somehow looks more radiant than usual Her face is a little fuller and softershes like a baby Ellen Barkin. Aurora awakens early too, and Jim wins her heart, but only through an act of deception. At first, Aurora has trouble accepting that shes doomed to live the rest of her life on a mostly deserted space ship. But she succumbs to the idea, and to Jim, too. The two go for a romantic space walkat last, Jim has someone with whom to share the glory of spaces emptinessand try to kiss afterward. Their barrel shaped suits keep them from getting too close, and they laugh. Theyve become an Adam and Eve for End Times. The knowledge of Jims deceit tortures him, but hes also happier than he has ever been. And if thats not a great fainting couch on which to drape a science fiction romance, what is Passengers director is Morten TyldumThe Imitation Game, working from a script by Jon Spaihts, and he vests much of the movie with a buzzing neon glow. The space walk scenes, contrasting glo stick luminescence with inky blackness, are particularly beautiful. But the movie runs aground in the last third Its as if Tyldum and Spaihts know they cant get too wiggy, so they take a hard right and try to land their ship in more conventional territory. Along the way they make what appears to be a failed attempt to channel the intense doomed romanticism of Brian De Palmas Mission to Mars specifically, the sorrowful and glorious scene in which astronaut Connie Nielsen fails to save her fellow astronaut husband, Tim Robbins. By that point, Tyldum has crashed his ship, figuratively speakinginside this failed picture theres a sicker, darker, more truthful one crying to get out. But for a while, Passengers is really going for something. The movie it might have been is lost in space, alone, never to be seen by mere mortals. All we can see from Earth are its few brightly burning scraps, but at least its something.