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Hig (Jacob Elordi) may be the most perfect guy alive, not that he’s got much competition. In Ridley Scott’s simple-minded sociological study “The Dog Stars,” an influenza epidemic wiped out the majority of our squabblesome species sometime during the last decade. The LCD screens outside the Denver Nuggets basketball arena continue to flicker, although weeds and wolves have overrun the fast-food joints in a bit of postapocalyptic product placement.

A former mechanic and construction worker, Hig lives 25 miles north of the city on what appears to be a combination high school football field/rural airport. Periodically, the soft-spoken and generous man flies his Cessna into town to scavenge soda pop for a dozen or so cherubic Mennonite children on a nearby homestead. Those wholesome visits seem to cheer him up a little, what with the kids’ minder (Benedict Wong) striding around in a straw hat and overalls like something out of Norman Rockwell, and the youngsters thanking Hig with crayoned portraits of his doting German shepard, Jasper. Still, he’s bummed out about his dead wife (Sai Bennett), who, like most dead movie wives, appears in flashbacks as beatific, mute and adoring.

The script by Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”) wants us to fret that Hig may succumb to suicide but whiffs that idea by trying to get it across in a scene where Hig shuts off the Cessna’s engine mid-flight with Jasper happily riding shotgun. Even if we were willing to accept that Hig might deliberately crash his plane, we can’t buy for a second that he’d hurt his sweet pup. Nevertheless, the film’s dystopian beats are so familiar, you’ve probably guessed by now that you shouldn’t get too attached to the dog.

Hig has bunkered down with a grouchy companion, Bangley (Josh Brolin), who thrives in this harsh world. To Bangley, the four essentials of life are “power, food, water and weapons.” Their armory is formidable; their cash supply, a source of comic relief. At night, Hig and Bangley play poker with stacks of $5,000 bills that they throw around as casually as nickels. Patrolling their two-man compound, Bangley insists on killing all outsiders before they might cause any trouble. Adding insult to headshot, he calls his casualties “cockroaches.”

Soon, Hig will meet a freckled widow named Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her suspicious father, Pops (Guy Pearce). The young pair make eyes at each other. Yet these survivors are so hard-wired to be fearful of their neighbors that Hig and Cima’s rusty, tentative flirtation takes place under the gaze of her daddy’s gun, a heck of a chaperone. The most they get up to is heavy spooning.

This is an uncomplicated yarn about a man prying open his heart and nudging other hard nuts to do the same. There’s little tension or drive, just shaggy scenes about paranoia, trust and hope. The characters seem to endure only to get to their next traumatic memory reveal.

At once plain-spoken and vague, the story lacks a firm grip on facts like the distance between places and how long this mess has been going on. It snatches at our attention with no more finesse than a losing fighter fumbling for a weapon. Hig’s Cessna works fine until it’s narratively convenient that it doesn’t. Then when needed, it works again. Meanwhile, Brolin’s Bangley oscillates in personality from miserable bastard to laugh factory.

At 88, Scott remains the cinema’s uneasy philosopher, continually fretting about the technological and societal tools we’ve developed to destroy ourselves. He’s made one genuinely optimistic film, 2015’s “The Martian,” which also happens to be his biggest box office success. Other than that, he’s never seemed confident that the future will turn out all right, although he’s kept on working out his worries onscreen, forever hunting for flakes of hope in the rubble. (If you take Scott’s IMDb as gospel, he’s got seven upcoming features in various stages of preproduction, more than George Lucas has ever made.)

“The Dog Stars” is based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel of the same name, which, in those naive, pre-COVID times, was received as a rosier take on Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” Scott’s version of“The Dog Stars” borrows its title, premise and a handful of proper names. Otherwise, it’s loud where the book was quiet and subtle where the book got sweaty. A barrage of newly concocted action sequences in the second half makes the pacing so off-balance that the film feels like a heron trying to fly with one blinged-out wing.

I’m only half-complaining — those giddy, bloody scenes are the best parts of the movie. But we in the audience could have used some of that pizzazz at the beginning, too, before we spent nearly an hour settling into the idea that we’ve seen all of this before.

The attackers to come are a bizarre grab bag of baddies. One gang wears football pads as armor and comes galloping in on horses, whooping like the Apaches in a John Ford movie. Another horde, the Reapers, runs around shirtless to show off their thick black tattoos. The Reapers look awesome through cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt’s night-vision binoculars that make their skin glow an alien shade of green. Neither group comes across like human beings. The film handles them more like zombies or rabid raccoons, and since these extras are the only characters of color, I won’t fault anyone who finds their treatment morally queasy.

Late in the film, we also meet a third group headed by Allison Janney doing a cap-tip to Nurse Ratched as the soundtrack cues the mind-numbing waltz from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Otherwise, Harry Gregson-Williams’ meddlesome score tells us everything that’s about to happen 30 seconds before it does. Besides Janney and Qualley’s plucky Cima (what in the made-up name is that?), few grown women seem to be left alive for reasons probably better left unsaid. (A goon in the book wears a necklace made of dried labia. Scott sagely omits that detail.)

Elordi nearly shoulders the running time but plays his Hig a bit too humbly. I’ve rarely seen Elordi wearing his lanky, handsome screen presence comfortably; something about the actor usually seems to be apologizing for his own existence. His recessive Hig needs more charisma so we can care about him as a character, not just an idealized hero. But you like him anyway. How can you not when Hig is giving his dog a good scratch?

Having lived through a seismic pandemic himself, it makes sense that Scott would be drawn to the original novel’s blend of patience and poetry. Yet, it’s odd how little of it he’s kept. To hold my own interest, I imagined myself as a hunter-explorer trying to figure out why Scott had bothered to adapt it at all, and turned up a line where Brolin’s Bangley looks back on his old life and admits that he couldn’t understand what he had until it was gone. A lovely moment, although I don’t believe it’s in the book either.

That’s the theme of this rote exercise. But I preferred a minor beat a few minutes later when a character puts down their gun and picks up a guitar. Bad as this world feels, there’s still pleasure in making art. Which is why Scott keeps at it, too — and while I don’t think much of this one, I’m awful glad he does.

A man named Daniel took to Twitter to share his frustration after a fellow passenger refused to swap seats with him so he could sit next to his girlfriend on their flight, sparking a viral plane passenger etiquette debate

What would you say if someone asked to swap seats with you on a flight?

It’s a difficult and touchy topic. We live in an age in which most people who fly will play the easyJet and Ryanair lottery, in which seats are allocated to them at random if they opt not to pay a hefty fee to choose where they sit.

That means that if you end up with a solid spot on a flight, you’ve either forked out for it or your lucky numbers have come in.

I recently wrote about how I played the Ryanair roulette during a trip to Athens and ended up with the best seats on the plane, for both the outbound and return flight. You can read about my unproven but promising technique here.

Tensions rose on a recent flight over seats, and specifically, whether it is acceptable to ask somebody to swap with you. It all kicked off when one man took to Twitter to vent his frustration after a fellow passenger refused to exchange seats with him so he could sit alongside his girlfriend.

Their reason for declining? They simply wanted to enjoy the window view.

But who was in the right here, and who was in the wrong?

In his tweet, the man, named Daniel, wrote: “A boomer refused to swap seats on a flight this morning to let my gf and I sit together on the last day before we’re apart for 2.5 months – because they wanted to look out the window. Strong generational metaphor areas, Shane.”

Hundreds liked his post, yet more than 200 people waded in with their opinions in the comments section.

One user branded him an “entitled brat” saying: “Did you stomp your feet like the spoiled, entitled brat you come across as???”

Another fired back: “Your lack of planning is nobody else’s problem.” A third chimed in: “Your petty complaint has no merit and naming him reflects very much on you, not the boomer.”

A fourth person argued that the poster could have taken steps to avoid the situation unfolding. “There are so many steps you could have taken prior to boarding to ensure you sat next to her if you felt it that important. You put yourself in that situation, not the boomer,” they wrote. Some users noted that it was difficult to fully assess the situation without knowing what the other passenger was thinking or going through at the time.

Following the wave of criticism, Daniel decided to launch a poll to settle the debate once and for all. He asked followers to vote on whether or not it’s acceptable to request a seat swap on a plane.

The final results revealed that 64 percent of those who participated considered it a “reasonable request”, while 36 percent felt you’d be pushing your luck by doing so.

Do you think it’s unreasonable to ask someone to swap seats with you on a plane? Let us know in the comments below.

A mum of twins was left baffled when her two infants were refused to sit next to each other on a flight, and she’s now urging others to be aware of little-known rule

A mum has urged other parents to beware of one important rule when flying with infants, as her young twin babies were refused to sit on the same row.

As summer is officially here, many people will be taking the opportunity to travel for the summer holidays, either to soak up the sunshine in a tropical country, or even to visit people in a different part of the world. And if you’re bringing a young infant under the age of two, you’ll be happy to learn that most airlines will offer a cheaper fare if they don’t require their own seat.

But one twin mum named Savannah Gavigan was left baffled as she and her husband boarded their flight recently, as they had been forced to split up their twins on the flight due to a little-known rule they had ‘no idea’ even existed.

“Friendly reminder to all twin parents: two in-lap infants can’t sit in the same row,” Savannah wrote in the overlay text of her TikTok video, which showed her two twins playing with each other despite sitting on separate rows on the plane.

“But they still find a way to spend time together,” Savannah jokingly added in the caption of her post.

Why can’t babies and young kids be seated next to each other on flights?

The main reason why only one lap infant (an infant sat in an adult’s lap) can be seated on each row of two or three seats of a plane is because of airline safety rules, as there are generally only enough oxygen masks in a row for the main passengers with one extra. So if there are multiple kids under the age of two in one row sitting in an adult’s lap, there would not be enough oxygen masks for them all to use.

Passengers will most likely encounter this on flights across most airlines as they often all follow the same rules and precautions.

But there are ways to get around this, such as if you’re flying with twins or just two infants under the age of 2. Many airlines will offer the opportunity to buy an extra, separate seat for one of the infants. If one infant is in their own seat (often in an approved car seat or with a harness), you can all sit together in the same row. Some airlines will also offer seats with bassinets that babies can lay in throughout the flight.

If both infants that you’re travelling with are lap babies, the closest you can sit together is across the aisle or directly in the row in front/behind each other, as it’s every three rows that will have four oxygen masks.

Keep in mind that some airlines require an additional accompanying adult if one adult is traveling with two infants, and at least one of the babies may need to be secured in a safety-approved car seat.

People soon took to the comment section of Savannah’s video to share their bafflement as many parents shared they’d never heard of the rule before.

“This should be in the disclaimer when you book a flight. How random I would’ve never known!” one person commented. Someone else said: “Will be traveling with the family in October and the grandbabies will be six months so this is a good thing to know now!”

Some flight attendants also appeared in the comments to verify the statement, as one said: “Hey flight attendant here! Thanks for bringing this up!!! It has to do with oxygen masks! Should they deploy we want everyone to have one in reach and easily accessible, reaching may take extra time that could be detrimental!”

Someone else went on to say: “You can though BUT – it depends on the aircraft type and where the bassinets are located. 2 bassinets on D & G on B777, A380 etc on many airlines ( Ex cabin crew )”

“Which? has repeatedly highlighted Ryanair’s harsh approach to separating families and making parents pay a fee to sit next to children as young as three,” said Rory Boland, travel editor at Which?, “so it’s good to see the regulator investigating the airline’s behaviour.”

The Competition and Markets Authority is investigating whether Ryanair’s practice of charging parents around £8 each way to sit with their children on flights is a breach of the law

Budget airline Ryanair is being investigated over its practice of charging parents to sit with their children on flights.

Watchdog the Competition and Markets Authority said it will decide whether it is “in line with consumer law”. Ryanair responded by branding the probe “bogus” and a “failed effort by the Starmer Government to pretend it cares about consumers”.

The Irish carrier requires at least one parent to sit with their children aged between two and 11, according to the watchdog. But it does this through what the airline calls a mandatory family seat, which typically costs about £8 each way. Paying to reserve a seat is optional for other passengers.

The CMA is investigating whether Ryanair’s approach means “parents are being charged for the airline to meet its child safety and disability-related obligations as set out under aviation rules”. Ryanair is “the only major airline flying out of the UK to impose this charge”, according to the watchdog.

Other carriers offer to seat children flying with a parent without the need for a paid reservation, or automatically allocate seats together during booking, the CMA said.

The investigation will also examine whether Ryanair’s mandatory family seat fee is dripped in during the booking process, which is when a business does not initially present customers with all unavoidable charges. The CMA added it is at the beginning of its investigation and has “reached no conclusions about whether Ryanair has broken the law”.

Hayley Fletcher, senior director of consumer protection at the CMA, said: “Lots of families save up to afford a summer holiday and we know that extra charges can quickly bump up the price. Our investigation will consider Ryanair’s approach to family seat reservations and how the cost is presented to consumers, to determine whether they comply with consumer law.

“For the past year, we’ve told businesses to ensure their customers are shown the total price upfront – those who don’t face the very real possibility of action from the CMA.”

Ryanair said in a statement: “Ryanair’s family seating policy fully complies with all relevant laws and regulations, and saves families money when travelling on the UK’s lowest fare airline.”

It said it “does not charge any fee for children to sit beside their parent”, and “parents travelling with children pay for only one (adult) reserved seat”.

It added: “This bogus CMA investigation is a failed effort by the Starmer Government to pretend it cares about consumers when it has failed to abolish APD (air passenger duty) which would immediately deliver lower fares for all consumers and growth for the UK aviation, tourism and wider economy. Ryanair looks forward to disproving these false CMA claims.”