Passengers 'Isn't Worth the Trip'

The premise: Two humans awake from hibernation 90 years too early on a spaceship that's supposed to be taking them and thousands of others to a new planet. The reaction: No, thank you. Here's what critics are saying about Passengers:

• Chris Pratt's Jim is keeping a secret from Jennifer Lawrence's Aurora, but "the movie does little to nothing" with it, writes Peters Travers at Rolling Stone. The movie could have raised a "challenging moral provocation" but instead ends up being an "agonizingly slow sci-fi misfire" that poorly serves Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, and the audience. It "isn't worth the trip."
• Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post is on the same page. While "Lawrence exerts her usual magnetism" and is able "to infuse real warmth and feisty humor" into the film, Hornaday couldn't get over the plot that "hinges on a morally dubious act that the filmmakers gloss over in a series of creepy justifications." The whole thing "feels alternately dreary and patently derivative."

• Stephanie Zacharek thinks the movie leaves "a sicker, darker, more truthful one crying to get out." But there's plenty to appreciate, she writes at Time, calling it "two-thirds of an amazing movie."
• John Wenzel applauds the "sleek imagery" and "cutting commentary on technology's role in alienating people in a crowded society" at the Denver Post. But beyond that, it falls flat and "rings as hollow as the shiny, cavernous spaces that provide much of the movie's backdrop."

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