Property Search Insider: Space, the final frontier for angry teens in ‘Voyagers’

MOVIE REVIEW

“VOYAGERS”

Rated PG-13. At AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.

Grade: C+

From writer-director Neil Burger (“Divergent”) comes another young adult science-fiction tale, this one of a cruise ship in deep space full of restless teenagers under the supervision of a single adult. Some of the young people find out that the adult is keeping them drugged and docile and forcing them to reproduce artificially. Is that a recipe for YA trouble or what?

Just when you thought you could not watch one more film of this kind, here is “Voyagers,” a title that sounds enough like “Passengers” (2016) to put you off you spaceship-grown peas and carrots. The story is set in 2063 when Earth is ravaged, and scientists have searched for another planet to colonize. They find one, but it’s 86 years away, so they train a group of children to live in “prolonged confinement” (Haven’t we all just done that?) on board the good ship Humanitas. Their leader is the adult caretaker Richard (a paternal Colin Farrell), who is also their surrogate father and psychologist. After 10 years, when all the children have reached adolescence, they start to ask questions such as, “What is that blue liquid we drink every day?”

The answer makes alpha males Christopher (Tye Sheridan) and Zac (Fionn Whitehead), who start out as friends, unhappy. They stop drinking “the blue.” They start wrestling and macking on Sela (Lily-Rose Depp), a fellow young voyager. The first third of “Voyagers” takes visual cues from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Before you can say, “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” two “voyagers” go out to repair an antenna, and it’s deja vu all over again. Soon, everyone is off “the blue,” and things get all “Fight Club” and then, yep, “Lord of the Flies.”

Zac (Fionn Whitehead) and Sela (Lily-Rose Depp) are headed for another planet aboard the spaceship Humanitas in ‘Voyagers.’

The trouble with “Voyagers” is that you know where it’s going, and you don’t want to wait 86 years to get there. People start behaving so out of character that you begin to wonder if these people all started out as test tube children of the damned. That would explain the group chanting, “Him, him, him, him.” What is “hidden” in compartment 23? The corridors of the ship are straight out of “2001” and deliberately lit to look that way, but way longer. The sound effects pound away. Why does Burger show us something and then pretend we didn’t see it? That’s cheating, not something you appreciate in a director. The young cast is fine. But once things get violent the PG-13 rating undermines the seriousness of the danger and the carnage.

Depp, who has her father’s cheekbones, also has presence and authority as Sela, the object of Zac and Christopher’s desire. Whitehead is certainly vicious enough as the crazed Zac. Sheridan of “Ready Player One” finds himself in another young adult effort, and he boasts credible leadership qualities as Christopher. But like everyone else, he’s limited by the derivative screenplay and echo chamber dialogue. By the time, someone started taking wild shots with a rifle-sized blaster INSIDE THE SPACESHIP, I was ready to eject. “Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL.”

Property Search Insider

Friday, April 9, 2021

Space, the final frontier for angry teens in ‘Voyagers’

MOVIE REVIEW

No comments:

Post a Comment