Passengers (2016)

PASSENGERS  (2016)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Morten Tyldum
    Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen,
    Laurence Fishburne, Andy Garcia, Vince Foster
Escapist sci-fi about a man and a woman stranded in space. It seems they're passengers tucked safely away in their suspended-animation pods on a transport taking them and 5,000 other space travelers to a planet 120 years away from Earth, when they wake up 90 years too soon. Now what do they do? Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence play the couple. Laurence Fishburne joins them eventually. Michael Sheen plays their indispensable android bartender. That's it for the ship's company, at least those who aren't fast asleep. A cast like that can hold your attention, but "The Martian", "Gravity" and "Interstellar" all made you care more about their characters and gave you more to think about. The spatial relationship between the exterior of the spaceship, which looks like an elaborate gyroscope, and the interior, which looks roughly the size of Mars, doesn't make any sense, but the movie does raise an interesting question. Suppose you found yourself alone on a space ship and you could choose between spending the next 50 years with Jennifer Lawrence or any of 5,000 other space travelers. What do you think you'd do? Yeah, me, too.