My distaste for Divergent
should be no secret to anyone who reads my reviews with any regularity. When the first film wasn’t making my eyes
roll with its trite and nonsensical plotting, it was boring me with its
dull and uninspired execution. And, in
all honesty, not much of that has changed with the sequel, exasperatingly named
The Divergent Series: Insurgent as if
not reminding us of the film’s franchise nature would cause us to forget the
first film exists. But maybe they were
right in that assumption, because this series is becoming bland and forgettable
enough that it’s difficult to even justify its existence to its fans.
I should probably start by pointing out what I liked about
the film, as there are aspects that are redeeming. Shailene Woodley, reprising her role as the
quaintly dystopian-ly named Tris, demonstrates a lot of potential as an
actress. The obvious comparison is to
Jennifer Lawrence in that other young adult dystopian franchise, but whereas
Lawrence seems clearly bored with the lack of dynamic challenge franchise roles
offer her, Woodley embraces the teenage angst of her role wholeheartedly and
still appears to be giving the appropriate amount of spunk to the girls of a
particular age she portrays. Also to
this film’s benefit are the visuals, which still are set in concrete gray urban
landscapes, but at least have the decency to explode in fractal patterns during
the film’s many CG simulations.
But that’s about it.
The plot, as in the first film, is a painful combination of idiotic and
derivative, telling yet another story of a resistance movement against a
vaguely oppressive regime, led by a female protagonist who is even more vaguely
defined as special than most in this genre.
The class system of Divergent’s
world doesn’t even make sense as any sort of broad social allegory by this
point, and only seems to serve as an excuse to paint its characters as
one-dimensionally and archetypally as possible.
The introduction of the Factionless only further spurs that confusion,
as Tris’s special property is that she is transcendent of factions, yet here is
a whole underclass of folks who do not conform.
It is writing without consistency, or at the very least any worthwhile
explanations.
And the acting, with the exception of Woodley, can be
described as lazy at best. Kate Winslet
seems to really be phoning it in as the Erudite villain Jeanine, portraying
nothing but stern determinism where a film this dumb really could have used
more scenery chewing to keep things interesting. Co-stars Ansel Elgort and Miles Teller seem
to be trying somewhat to make their characters believable as more than plot
vehicles, but their hearts seem only half in the game. The real dud of the production, though, is
Theo James as love interest Four (another unnecessarily contrived apocalyptic
nomenclature). He and Woodley have next
to no on-screen chemistry, which makes what should be the most human element of
Tris’s struggle for freedom a simple genre necessity, struggling in the meager
hope that the teenage girls in the audience care more about a chiseled jaw than
a believable performance.
By virtue of its willingness to be slightly more visually
creative than its predecessor, I do find that I like Insurgent more than its predecessor. However, that still doesn’t make it a good
film. This is a boring and sloppily
written franchise that only exists to cash in on that sweet teenage expendable
income by faithfully adapting their derivative reading material to the big
screen. And hey, I won’t say that I
think that kids reading is a bad thing, and making adaptations of young adult
fiction will encourage more young adults to read. But those adaptations need to come from good
source material and be made with a passion for that source material, and the Divergent series fits neither of those criteria.
What young adult series would you like to see brought to the
big screen? Leave your thoughts in the
comments below.
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