PASSENGERS: Anne Hathaway is my co-pilot.

PASSENGERS
Starring Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson, David Morse
Directed by Rodrigo Garcia
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Review by Louis Fowler

Anne Hathaway is what? 15? 16 years old? Without going to look it up, I'm gonna be generous and say that she's 17. Why do I ask this? Because, in the abysmal PASSENGERS, we're supposed to believe that she's a psychologist with two Masters and a PhD. And from reputable universities I presume, not from the Learning Annex. Shouldn't this make for a character around, I don't know...at the youngest, um, 30?

Hathaway is not that great an actress to begin with, but add the stress of having to appear “smart” and she is waaaaay out of her element. She's damn-near in Tera Reid territory. But, in all fairness, it does make for an entertaining film. It's like watching a little kid play dress-up and, look, how cute, she's conned adults into playing with her! It's far too much suspension of disbelief for people with rational thought, and apparently the mainstream public agrees with me, because PASSENGERS was a nice-sized bomb. You can't fool the public all the time and all that.

The movie pits “psychologist” Hathaway in a room with a small band of airplane crash survivors. They all come from the beloved stereotype stockpile that screenwriters resort to—the tough girl, the shaky guy, etc.—and are lead by the once-affable Patrick Wilson, whom you may remember as Nite-Owl from WATCHMEN. (Sadly, now I'll always remember him as that bland, boring dude from PASSENGERS.) You would think that, as the survivors of the crash start disappearing, this would be a wholly important plot point, but it's barely made mention of, as, instead, we're treated to an hour of Hathaway and Wilson woodenly flirting with each other while a shadowy-but-not-really-threatening representative of the airline follows them around. Or does he? Duhn-dun-DUUUUUNNNN!

In the last fifteen minutes or so we get two or three buffoonishly clumsy twist endings in order to justify the DVD's already-printed label of “shocking psychological thriller”. Each ending is so wonderfully idiotic, they are so ridiculous—one pulled-out-of-the-ass thing is piled on top of the next in such a beautifully rapid succession that they play more as a parody of these types of “are-they-ghosts-or-aren't-they” flicks. I was waiting the whole time for the Carmen Electra cameo and the credits “written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer”. But they were serious. They were so very serious. And thank them for that!

It's that straight-faced seriousness that makes PASSENGERS' cream rise to the top; it's Hathaway's best-worst performance since HAVOC—as a matter of fact, this would make a great double-feature with Lindsay Lohan's I KNOW WHO KILLED ME, although, sadly, Hathaway doesn't sport a robotic arm here. And yes, it would have helped. Robot arms always do.