TheBloodyCritique’s ‘Passengers’ Film Review
Passengers is a romantic comedy set in space, it’s written by Jon Spaihts (he was a co-writer on Prometheus, Doctor Strange and The Mummy, the Tom Cruise one, oh dear) directed by Morten Tyldum (he directed The Imitation Game which was pretty good) and stars Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence and Laurence Fishburne (they’ve all been in stuff!). In an unknown future other habitable planets have been discovered and a massive spaceship housing thousands of people is travelling towards one known as Homestead II. Due to the long journey which will take a further 90 years to complete the ‘passengers’ on board are all in hibernation pods but after a malfunction Chris Pratt and Chris Pratt alone is woken up and faces the grim existence of probably dying alone until he notices Jennifer Lawrence and contemplates waking her up too.
This is a very poorly written film, the narrative is sloppily thrown together and everything just felt too convenient to take seriously, there’s no subtlety at all and no pay off in the end either, it’s extremely lazy writing. Visually it looked good, great in moments I liked some of the visuals but it’s nothing new really, we’ve seen it all before in one shape or another, there’s no originality here. This is a love story at the end of the day and with a premise like this, a simple concept, you need something to be invested in and there’s no depth here at all, there’s no grit, there’s not even a sense of reality really, it’s just a series of oh that’s convenient moments and without anything else to really distract you from it they stand out even more.
The best thing about Passengers is the chemistry between Christ Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, I’m not really a fan of either of them, I loved The Hunger Games (the first one!) and I loved both Guardians of the Galaxy movies but I don’t seek them out and I wouldn’t watch something just because they were in it but I thought both of them did as well as possible here. You can tell they get along in a brother/sister sort of way which helped the chemistry, obviously they feel comfortable around each other but that same brother/sister sort of relationship was present in the sex scenes and well, it felt a bit awkward in that it looked like it felt a bit awkward for them. Other than that I thought they bounced off each other nicely.
I think the tone was an issue as well, they weren’t sure how to balance the lighter stuff with the more heavy ideas and it just comes across as forced, comedy wise it’s not that funny either, I chuckled a couple of times, there was one moment in particular where I burst out laughing but I don’t think that was their intention. I should probably mention Laurence Fishburne because he’s in this and when he turns up it’s just a wow moment, it was like Laurence Fishburne was literally playing the MacGuffin, that should have been his name, he was the face of their lazy writing and it was a low point, the lowest point in fact! He was fucking Morpheus! Passengers doesn’t feel like somebody’s artistic vision, it just feels like a product with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence’s faces on it.
I would describe Passengers as light, fluffy, shiny, mediocre, forgettable and most of all badly written, there’s easily a good film buried here somewhere, it’s a simple premise and both of these movie stars are able to deliver sufficient performances, all they needed to do was make it interesting but it never quite is, at best it’s amusing at times. The only real reason there is to see this movie is if you’re a big fan of Chris Pratt or Jennifer Lawrence or ideally both, if that isn’t the case which it isn’t for me then there’s really nothing here for you. It fails as a science fiction film, it fails as a comedy and it fails as a romance story, I of course cannot recommend this to anyone, I’m gonna give Passengers 5.5/10.
What's your favourite Chris Pratt/Jennifer Lawrence movie?