An interesting sci-fi allegory, but the characters fall flat

Neil Burger’s sci-fi flick “Voyagers” feels like the product of a brainstorming session that started with the concept “Nostromo for teens.” Indeed, the “Alien” DNA is obvious in “Voyagers,” but Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece is inescapable in modern sci-fi. Burger has given the sturdy, familiar template a “Lord of the Flies” twist with motivation borrowed from right from Space X impresario and would-be Mars colonizer Elon Musk: The Earth is too hot, we must find another planet.

With that premise, writer/ director Burger (“The Illusionist,” “Divergent”) takes the opportunity to pose the necessary questions inherent in intergalactic migration, like, how long will it take? Who will go? The answers provide the basic conceit of

“Voyagers.” It’ll take too long, 86 years in fact. So they have to plan for at least one generation to live their lives in space, reproducing future planetary pioneers. They should be young, old enough to drive, but young enough to survive the trip. As the kiddie astronauts climb aboard their rocket ship, with Colin Farrell as the only adult supervision, one can’t help but think: We’re doomed.

The film is an interesting, if blunt, political allegory, using the space ship, and the young people aboard, who were conceived as test tube babies and raised in isolation, as a way to examine social dynamics among human beings. In a crisis, they have to figure out how social order works without ever having experienced it for themselves. And though they’ve been genetically chosen for genius, and nurtured in an egalitarian pod,