Passengers

PASSENGERS (Morten Tyldum, 2016)

Everyone aboard the spaceship Avalon in PASSENGERS is to be in a state of hypersleep for most of the 120-year journey to Homestead II. Unfortunately for Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), he is accidentally awakened about thirty years into the voyage, meaning that if he can’t get back in that suspended state, he will live the rest of his life and die before anyone else comes out of their hibernation chambers. Jim has his run of the spacecraft, for the most part, but the company of just humanoid bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen) and the servant robots.

For a year Jim studies and works to no avail to figure out how he might save himself. Inconsolably lonely, he becomes enchanted with Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), a writer and fellow passenger he learns everything about. Finally Jim decides to awaken her so that he will have someone to share this doomed time with. Aurora doesn’t know that he is responsible for what has happened to her. She and Jim don’t become close right away, but considering the circumstances, their bond naturally becomes tighter, with Jim’s secret just waiting to be exposed and ruin everything.

The early section of PASSENGERS with Jim on his own cuts to the humor and terror in his predicament. He is relieved to send a message to someone who might be able to help, but the punchline is that it will take decades for his distress call to reach anyone. Jim essentially has his run of the ship, but he’s still at the mercy of the automated access provided by the price level at which he booked his ticket. Everything is so close and yet so far away in this TWILIGHT ZONE-like scenario.

That Jim would choose to subject someone else to the same fate is understandable even if it is a morally indefensible choice. Desperation can make fools of us all, and his situation would be enough to push anyone to the edge. The problem for PASSENGERS is not the decision Jim makes but how it deals with the repercussions of his actions. Morten Tyldum’s direction and Jon Spaihts’ screenplay view Jim as a romantic hero. They allow Aurora to have her time to feel angry and betrayed, but ultimately the film treats Jim as Adam if he didn’t need God’s intervention to provide him with a companion. PASSENGERS implicitly states that Jim deserves Aurora, an aspect that gets magnified with Pratt’s puppy dog charms.

PASSENGERS also bungles the ending. Even being exceedingly generous in allowing how Aurora might come to reevaluate the state of things, what she decides rings false. On a dramatic level it also clanks because the opportunity for Jim to atone for his sins is dismissed in favor of rewarding him. PASSENGERS’ tone deafness mistakes feelings of male entitlement for romance. The saying goes that all’s fair in love and war, but that sentiment can justify horrors. If the film were capable of viewing the story through Aurora’s lens, PASSENGERS might have succeeded. Instead it doesn’t notice the warped perspective.

Grade: C

Delivery Man

DELIVERY MAN (Ken Scott, 2013)

At a glance David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn) is no one’s idea of someone well-equipped for parenthood. He’s an irresponsible middle-aged man who can’t help but make bad decisions, which explains why he’s deeply in debt to a loan shark and is trying to come up with the cash by growing marijuana with hydroponics in his apartment. David has a steady job driving the delivery truck for the family meat market in Brooklyn, but he’s better at being liked by the clientele than making his drop-offs in a timely manner. His unreliability also affects his relationship with girlfriend Emma (Cobie Smulders). When he shows up at her place late one night, she informs him that she’s pregnant but isn’t sure she wants him involved with the child.

Although David begins to like the idea of being a dad, in DELIVERY MAN he soon finds out that he’s already the biological father to 533 children. From 1991 to 1994 he made nearly seven hundred donations to a fertility clinic while using the pseudonym Starbuck. His specimens proved to be potent and popular. Now many of the offspring want to know his identity and are filing a class-action suit against the clinic to break the confidentiality agreement.

A packet of his biological kids’ profiles is among the paperwork David receives regarding the case. His friend and lawyer Brett (Chris Pratt) advises against opening the envelope, but David’s curiosity gets the better of him. Reading the profiles become like eating potato chips: he can’t stop at just one. Although David doesn’t want to reveal who he is, he starts tracking down these previously unknown children and helping them as a guardian angel of sorts.

Although DELIVERY MAN director and co-writer Ken Scott is remaking his Canadian film STARBUCK, the material often feels half-formed than overworked. David’s qualities shift depending on how the film insists he is to be viewed rather than from him actually changing. He’s introduced as being a perpetually mistake-prone and inconsiderate man-child until he cottons to the idea of being a dad, yet information later comes to light of generosity and sweetness that his family has always acknowledged. Side characters appear and are dismissed without a second thought. Emma fades into the background until DELIVERY MAN needs an occasional reminder that David is also reproducing in a more traditional way. A subplot about toughs coming to claim the money David owes them is so haphazardly integrated that it might as well be excised. Brett’s situation with a household of four rambunctious little ones could use a bit more clarity, but Pratt’s amusing interactions with the kids distract from questions about his life’s vagueness.

Vaughn hits some nice notes, particularly in scenes with an institutionalized son, as he struggles with his fears for the well-being of all these kids he never knew he had and thrills at their successes. Although the process yields instant answers for David, the nervousness over what fate may hold for his children reflects any parent’s desires that everything will work out. With so many kids sharing his genes David’s brood covers the gamut, yet he learns that loving each one is more important than whether they fulfill his hopes and expectations.

DELIVERY MAN sets up as though it might be a farce yet resists the comedic possibilities in the David’s stalker-like activities to get closer to his unfamiliar children. Instead the film plays as a mostly sentimental portrait of imminent fatherhood. Still, for as much as DELIVERY MAN wishes to confirm that David has the makings of a good father, Scott often undermines such thinking. A poorly conceived scene mines for laughs as David vacillates over whether he should commit a junkie teenage daughter for care or sign for her release from the hospital. She says she can quit if she wants and claims to be starting a department store job the next morning, so she doesn’t need rehab to get her life in order. While the scenario has a happy ending, David’s decision demonstrates he’s far from the level-headed guy the film says he is and always has been.

Grade: C

The Five-Year Engagement

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT (Nicholas Stoller, 2012)

Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) and Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt) are ready to get married, but life circumstances have a way of delaying their plans in THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT. The San Francisco-residing lovebirds put their matrimonial designs on hold when she gets accepted into the University of Michigan’s graduate school but not the one at nearby University of California, Berkeley.  Facing imminent relocation to Ann Arbor for two years, they don’t have the time to pull together a wedding.

Tom quits his job as a sous chef so they can remain together.  He supports Violet pursuing her career in psychology and academia, although the sacrifice stings a bit more when it is followed with the knowledge that he was about to receive the chance to run a restaurant.  While he’s disappointed to miss out on the opportunity, he expects not to have any problems finding work in Michigan.

The Midwest proves not to be as hospitable as he imagined it, though.  Cooking jobs, especially at the compensation rate to which he’s accustomed, are virtually nonexistent.  He lands employment at a wildly popular delicatessen, but making sandwiches isn’t what Tom envisioned for himself.  The cold, snowy winters aren’t much to his liking either.  While Violet thrives, Tom descends into a funk that deepens when it appears their stay in Ann Arbor will be longer than anticipated.

The title of THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT incorrectly suggests that the tension between Tom and Violet stems from the obstructions keeping them from the altar.  While their families and friends are perturbed by the seemingly perpetual postponements, these two act unaffected by their inability to become legally joined.  They behave as a committed couple and present themselves to others as such.  All they lack is the paperwork.

No, the widening rift in the relationship comedy comes from Tom feeling Violet may not fully appreciate what he is forgoing for her benefit while she is frustrated that he won’t communicate sufficiently with her about his dissatisfaction.  THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT is most successful when focusing on the two of them together fending off the pressures others would put on their decisions.  The more it drifts from Tom and Violet’s front, whether it’s united or not, the more it becomes sidetracked with subplots and characters of little consequence.  Some of these scenic diversions, like Violet’s professor Winton (Rhys Ifans) trying to explain the proper pronunciation of his dog’s name, add amusing observational humor to the mix.  Director Nicholas Stoller, who co-wrote the screenplay with Segel, includes a preponderance of not unwelcome but unnecessary scenes that the background begins to squeeze out the main story.

Inevitably Tom and Violet’s journey as a couple reaches a critical juncture where they must determine how or if to clear a path out of the thicket blocking them.  To this point THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT has fancied itself more levelheaded and emotionally realistic than similar films and deserves such a designation, but then it loses all of the accrued goodwill. The characters seem halfhearted in following the prescribed plot mechanics, yet they behave as the genre says they must.  That’s not to say the people in these films aren’t permitted to make dumb or bad decisions, just that they need to develop organically.  THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT eventually rallies from these big missteps, but the damage can’t quite be repaired in full.  That goes double for much of the unfunny and lazy vulgarity decorating the film.

Segel and Blunt come across believably as a loving couple struggling to balance challenges in their long-range plans and usually trying their best to resolve them.  As Tom’s best friend Alex and Violet’s sister Suzie, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie provide a funny counterexample.  Pratt, who’s in the habit of stealing scenes on TV’s PARKS AND RECREATION, provokes laughter with his belief in saying what he thinks no matter how stupid or insensitive it might sounds.  Alex represents an exaggerated standard of how to talk in a relationship, but his directness isn’t entirely a bad idea.  Brie reacts to his idiocy with a mixture of affection and disapproval that shows these two have figured out how to talk.  (She also shares a standout scene with Blunt in which they conduct a serious conversation in Elmo and Cookie Monster voices.)

Like life, THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT can be messy and irrational.  The shame is that the film doesn’t need to be those things quite to the degrees that they are.

Grade: C+