My adamant refusal to read any more young adult novels may
have seriously hindered my powers as a reviewer.
Most of the times, when you go see a movie, you expect it to
meet with you on your own terms man-to-film.
If the film is enjoyable, then it will be enjoyable independently; if
the film is obnoxious, then you have no-one to blame but the film itself. Those are the rules
From what I can tell these new Divergent movies do not play
by these standard movie rules; apparently in order to fully enjoy them I must
first read the book. Whenever I’m
confused by the nonsensical story? It turns
out it was explained in the book.
Whenever I can’t keep track of or care about the numerous
sub-characters? I’m told they were
already really great in the book. It’s
kind of irritating.
To be fair that criticism sticks better to last years
original Divergent then it does to its first sequel, Insurgent. Does this new movie still try and keep track
of a bunch of meaningless sub characters?
Yes. Do large portions of the
movie’s central premise make absolutely no sense? Yes; but those problems are held at bay,
though never remedied. By Insurgent’s organized, well paced, plot and simple
story.
Just giving a movie a simple three-part structure and a well
established central conflict can do wonders to any movie series, and while
those things don’t save Insurgent from the wasteland of boring that is its
central characters and premise, it does a great job of making watchable what
could have been incredibly frustrating.
“Watchable,” however, is not the same as passable. Insurgent gives us very few reasons to give a
flying flip about its one-note protagonists, much less the seemingly dozens of
side-characters. It also has the
potential to stretch an audience’s suspension of disbelief. Thank goodness this movies story is
quick-paced and mcguffin-filled otherwise it might drown in its own ridiculousness.
There is a portion of this film where the strong majority of
the films protagonists are strapped to mind control devices; yet they are only
used once. The villains use these
devices to make one nameless character kill herself, why didn’t they just do
that to everyone? Problem solved. There are tons of little annoying plot things
like that through out the flick.
In the end I can only muster up so much hate for Insurgent;
most of the stuff I don’t like about it is the same stuff that I didn’t like
about the first, and for the most part Insurgent is a fair sized upgrade above
that. It’s not good, but if you liked Divergent
then you’ll probably like this one even more.
And if you’re a fan of the book, this is obviously a must see. Just don’t go expecting this to be on par
with Harry Potter or The Hunger Games.
As far as movie series go The Divergent Series is a C list-er at best.
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