No one said space travel would be easy, much less falling in love on a remote journey across the galaxy, or fixing a failing ship. But the new interplanetary action romance “Passengers,” buffed to a high-tech gloss by “The Imitation Game” director Morten Tyldum, takes an intriguing construct about existential loneliness among the stars, and introduces a moral peril it has no interest in treating intelligently or realistically, despite the presence of two capable leads in Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.
That leaves the rest of the movie with an unwelcome thematic stain regarding issues of male captivity fantasy and victimization, and it makes the heroic derring-do that dominates the second half ring laughably hollow.