Well I brought this scene up and not a single person in the room had ever heard of the film before. "Oh, wait, did that have Vince Vaughn in it?" So sad. I did get some courtesy laughter and one guy, out of pity, did say that he thought he remembered the movie after my story, but clearly the joke was lost on them.
But the second someone brought up I Love You Man, everyone in the room erupted in laughter. It was like someone brought up Coming to America or something, you know, the greatest comedy of all time! Don’t get me wrong, I like me some "slapping the bass" but how can you love that film and have never seen Swingers? It’s not like I was referencing a Charlie Chaplin film or something; I’m not that old!
Anyway, this reminded me of the argument I brought up last month when I was reviewing the film Arrival. I knew that most of America wouldn’t appreciate it simply because unless you’re above the age of 30, you’ve never actually seen a true Sci-Fi film given all of the crap Hollywood has fed you over the years. All that youngsters have seen to this point in their lives are the ok Star Trek reboots and a few Tom Cruise films. So I knew that Passengers, no matter how solid it may be, was going to do poorly at the theaters as people didn’t want to get "fooled" into seeing yet another boring Sci-Fi flick (see Arrival). And for those who haven’t read my Arrival review, I think it’s clearly one of the best films of the year.
Passengers, as it turned out, ended up actually being somewhat entertaining. Don’t get me wrong, there is a ton of stuff that’s unbelievably wack in it but more on that in a second. If you’ve seen the preview, there’s a really good chance you think you’ve already seen the movie as it basically feels as though they’ve shown you the entire film in two minutes; but thankfully, that’s not entirely accurate.
This film is about 5,000 adventurers who decide to leave their lives on Earth behind so they can go colonize a planet that’s far far away. And from what I remember, the entire trip was scheduled to take over 120 years to complete, so obviously the passengers and the crew had to be put in some sort of cryo sleeping state to survive the voyage. Well along the way, something goes wrong and Jim (Chris Pratt) and Aurora’s (Jennifer Lawrence) pods are opened, awakening them both about 90 years too soon. So they are forced to either figure out a way to get back to sleep or accept the fact that they are going to die on the ship alone. But as you actually watch the film, you soon learn that not everything is as the preview made it out to be.
First let me start with what I thought was cool about this film. It’s in space, so that alone captured my attention. Jim and Aurora’s little spacewalk in the middle of the film was cool and it definitely brought back a few dreams of mine that I had when I was a kid. Second, there’s a scene in the film where the ship temporarily loses gravity and the director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game and Headhunters) uses this opportunity to provide you with some of the best visuals you’ll see in this two hour (real time) voyage. Third, it had Jennifer Lawrence in it! The fact that every normal male out there is still in love with her, in spite of her Fappening photos, makes this secret "love in space" film bearable. Plus, her acting chops are on full display in this film, so for all you film connoisseurs out there, that should make you happy and also allow you to look past the borderline misogyny that’s in this review. It was also great to see Michael Sheen flashing his skills as the robot bartender and the film’s real storyline does make you think about some of the choices you’d make if you were put in a similar situation to Jim’s.
But now comes the bad. It’s a two hour ‘love in space’ film. I don’t mind love but have it serve as a backdrop to the actual science fiction of the film. I don’t need to see movie and dinner dates in space; hell they suck badly enough on Earth. "These aren’t tiger shrimp, I knew we should’ve gone to Irene’s instead!" That’s an excerpt from my real life by the way, not the film. Also, at one point, the writers turned the super mechanic, Jim into a world class botanist. And for those who don’t know, they are not one in the same. He’s somehow able to plant trees in the middle on the ship’s concourse with no soil and no place for the roots to grow. Ok, so I can live with that, and I can even live with the film’s ridiculously over the top Hollywood ending (trust me when I say you’ll know it when you see it) but my problem lies with the film’s half-hearted attempts to add depth to the story. They toss around themes about the ship’s corporate owners true motives and how a class system still exists on the ship even though they’re only supposed to be awake for 3 to 4 months. But these themes are only given cheesy one liners and then they go right back to making stupid eyes at one another. It felt like Arnold in The Sixth Day when after about a 90 second attempt to explain what had happened earlier in the film, he responds by saying "Enough of the philosophy" and goes right back to doing Arnold things.
Come on, not all of us are Arnolds; we want a real story to chew on while escaping from making our New Year’s Eve plans. Oh well, as you can see, I both liked and hated this film but overall I was glad that I saw it. It’s not one of the better films I’ve seen this year but it’s enjoyable at times, so based off of that, I’ll give it a rating of barely WEAK.
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