Ten Statements About....PASSENGERS (2016)

"Boy the commissary has gone all to crap..." 

"Who planted a tree in the middle of my ship?"

1) Boy, Jennifer Lawrence sure is purty.

That is all.

Wait, you want more?  Well....

2) What does it say about your movie that the most sympathetic character is an android that spends most of its time polishing glasses?

3) There are moments in this film that work as set porn--scenes such as the ones in The Observatory, the space just outside the ship and The World’s Coolest Swimming Pool are pretty damn good looking, and give you a hint at what was going through the creator’s mind instead of, you know, logical character development and the like.

"I am so serious about safe sex!"

4) While it’s obvious that the film expects you to identify with Chris Pratt’s Jim, it’s hard to have sympathy with him when he does something truly heinous to bring Lawrence’s Aurora into the film.  And when that heinous thing is exposed, the film refuses to let Jim have the comeuppance he deserves.  Hell, the script rewards him for this supremely dickish act.

5) This is a film that forces one of the main characters to do a total 360 in attitude because the third act wouldn’t work without it...and that sudden about-face sours said third act.

6) Gee, Laurence Fishburne--thanks for waking up from suspended animation long enough to serve as Captain Exposition and hand our protagonists a (literal) magic ticket before dying of Mysterious Movie Illness.

Yep...best special effect in the film....

7) And speaking of that magic ticket...we’re told, in no uncertain terms, that the protagonists cannot return to suspended animation.  But once they get that magic ticket, they find out that’s not the case.  Good job keeping your own rules straight, movie.

8) Why can our protagonists (no way I’m calling them heroes) survive such hazards as a vacuum, decompression, and nuclear freakin’ fire with little or no ill effects?  Well, because the script needs them to...

9) I give the movie credit for coming up with a unique starship design.  There’s something elegant in the way it moves forward that’s quite attractive.

10) I don’t know about you, but if I was the ship’s captain, I’d be pretty pissed at the way our protagonists leave the Grand Concourse for them.

Overall...while there are a few grace notes that almost let us forget about the shoddiness of the script, it’s hard to get away from the fact that it’s a sloppy little entry.  Add in a really awful, nonsensical third act, and you have something that’s Not Very Good A’Tall.