To use the first of two memorable sci-fi misquotations: “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” Jim being Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), a mechanical engineer who along with 5000 passengers and 258 crew members aboard Homestead’s premiere interstellar starship Avalon is 30 years into a 120 year voyage to find “a new world, a fresh start, room to grow” on a distant colony called Homestead II.

But to use the second misquotation: “Houston, we have a problem.” For due to a technical malfunction with Jim’s hibernation chamber, he has been roused from his state of suspended animation 90 years too early. And with only an android bartender by the name of Arthur (Michael Sheen) to keep him company with a continuous supply of bourbon whisky, he starts to go stir crazy. Not to mention bloated, bearded and in a permanent state of bedraggledness.

That is until he falls in love-at-first-sight with the appropriately named American journalist Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) whom he surreptitiously awakens from her beauty sleep after indulging in an advanced version of cyber stalking with a view of spending what remains of their threescore years and ten together. “You can’t get so hung up on where you’d rather be,” says the matchmaker bartender, “that you forget where you are.” Romance blossoms.

Then disaster strikes on two fronts: the bartender (who cannot tell a lie or keep a secret) sends Aurora into a furore by revealing how she was deliberately woken from her sleeping pod; and the technical malfunction, which prematurely opened Jim’s hibernation chamber threatens to bring down the entire starship. “I almost forgot my life is in ruins,” bemoans Aurora while sipping cocktails during a romantic dinner date. And therein lies the problem with the film.

Despite a few furrowed brows and photogenic tears, the two protagonists act as though they’re on a round-the-world cruise as part of a honeymoon, rather than hurtling into the unknown with no prospect of seeing their loved ones again. And though they are complete and utter strangers, you feel as though they’ve been best friends since high school for there is little sign of awkwardness, vulnerability or distrust.

Not only that, but Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence look every bit like the buffed and beautiful movie stars they are rather than three-dimensional characters trying to come to terms with their fast-approaching mortality. A problem which writer Jon Spaihts (Doctor Strange) exacerbates with clunky dialogue. “What are we looking for?” asks Aurora in the fire-engulfed engine room of the starship Avalon. “Something broken, something big,” Jim’s far from technical Scooby Doo reply.

Yes, there are oodles of dry one-liners from the android bartender and his small army of robotic colleagues to keep the watch-looking at bay (“We apologise for the delay,” quips one in a comical reference to a $6k video message, which takes 19 years to send and almost double that to receive a reply) and, yes, there is a $120m feast of intergalactic visuals to keep sci-fi fans happy, but my overall impression of Passengers by Norwegian director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) is summed up in Jim’s withering description of planet Earth: “Over-populated, over-priced and over-rated.”

Video courtesy of: Sony Pictures Entertainment

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Peter Callaghan
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