Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence star in a scene from the movie "Passengers." The Catholic News Service classification is A-III -- adults. (CNS/Columbia)

By Catholic News Service

Science fiction becomes the springboard for a study of selfishness, sin and the possibility of forgiveness that will resonate with romantics but may leave others cold.

After he wakes up from hibernation 90 years prematurely, and discovers that there is no way to get back into suspended animation, an engineer (Chris Pratt) who is one of the passengers on a spaceship bound for a distant colony planet is so oppressed by his loneliness that he eventually awakens another traveler (Jennifer Lawrence), an author whose background and writing he has studied and for whom he has fallen. Screenwriter Jon Spaihts and director Morten Tyldum take a big risk by having their protagonist essentially ruin the life of the woman he loves, then try to keep that fact a secret. But at least some viewers will appreciate the complicated emotions to which this situation gives rise and the skill with which both leads convey them.

Two premarital encounters, one of them semi-graphic, a couple of glimpses of rear nudity in a nonsexual context, a pair of mild oaths, a single crass term. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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