Passengers (2016)

3.5 Stars (out of four)

This movie, from the trailers, seems to be a simple story. Two people wake up from suspended animation on a long journey, fall in love and need to help each other with a disaster at the end. And while that is the general gist, it is actually a little more complicated and deeper than that, thankfully.

After a freak in-flight accident, engineer/mechanic Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) is awaken from suspended animation on a space flight from Earth to a new world Homestead II. The spaceship is a gargantuan vessel carrying over 5000 passengers. The accident caused a system malfunction and he finds he has been awakened 90 years too early on his journey. What he doesn't know is that the accident set into motion a cascading series of events that will come into play later. He awakes to find himself all alone on the ship, his only company an android bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen). Jim spends over a year trying to fix his problem and filling his time until he comes to the brink of loneliness and despair and almost commits suicide. He then sees writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) in another pod. He falls into an instant longing for her and learns everything about her. He wrestles with the idea of waking her up to allay his selfish, but ultimately necessary desire for human contact. He deliberately wakes her up, despite knowing he is dooming her to his fate, to die on the ship. When she wakes, he lets her believe she, like him, was awoken by accident. Gradually, they fall in love with each other until it is revealed his deliberate act. From then on, it gets interesting...

What impressed me so much was the dynamics of how their relationship changes throughout the story. We have all seen stories like this before, but Pratt and Lawrence are such riveting actors that they totally sell the premise. This movie is essentially an acting exercise around the question of horrible betrayal and can forgiveness happen. I heard one reviewer say that it's hard to buy into it since the movie has two of Hollywood's most beautiful stars in it. One should have been a lot less attractive and that would have made the story much more interesting. While that may be the case, this is a business and you have to get butts in the seat. But in the end, I found it to be a wonderful and satisfying story that most people will like. This is definitely a good date movie, so check it out.