young adult movie that doesn't 'diverge' from the genre norm

Rating: 6/10 (6 April 2014)

Quickie Review:
With the popular demand for young adult novel adaptations, comes yet another movie called Divergent. Tris (Shailene Woodley) learns that she is a Divergent, a threat to a post-apocalyptic society as she doesn't fit in its system. Now she must try to survive the witch-hunt for all Divergents. This movie is as generic as it gets for this genre: love interest, protagonist is special but that's not a good thing, training montages, and so on. The only redeeming quality of this movie is Woodley's character Tris. Beyond that there is not much else you will care about.
Full Review:
In a post-apocalyptic world, a society has been sustained in the ruins of Chicago. In this city the population is divided into five factions, where every citizen must fit into so they can fill a role of the society. The main protagonist Tris (Shailene Woodley), finds herself to be a Divergent, someone who doesn't fit in any faction and therefore a threat to the system. Tris along with her mentor, Four (Theo James), must now find a way to put an end to a plot to hunt down every Divergent.
Divergent is directed by Neil Burger, who has previously made The Illusionist, and Limitless, both movies which I quite enjoyed for doing something different. However, this movie fades into the noise of the young adult genre and does very little to differentiate itself from the generic clichés. As a result, this movie feels very lackluster and uninspired. The world created is intriguing at first, how the society is divided into factions to avoid conflict and war. Ironically this interesting idea also works against the whole movie, because all the characters are so cookie cutter and are exactly the same as everyone else in their faction. This may be intentionally done, but it leaves the audience with little care for anyone who is in peril on screen. The only characters that have any complexity is Tris and Four. So that's where I'll give some credit to the movie, the two central characters. Shailene Woodley is a great young actress in all the movies I've seen her in, and she is the best part of Divergent. She grows as a character and conveys her struggle between fitting in and being herself convincingly. Theo James, although not an incredible actor was at least layered and likable.
Movies are an experience, and my experience watching this movie showed several red flags in Divergent beyond the ones I already mentioned. There were moments in the movie that were meant to be taken seriously but come off so melodramatic and awkward that I, including the rest of the audience in the cinema burst into laughter at its unintentional ridiculousness. Also the movie spent too much time on the training aspect of the movie, to the point I partially forgot what the conflict of the movie was. It only got to the real meat of the plot at the last 30mins of a 2hr 20min movie! There is one line that is uttered about the world outside of the fenced off city of Chicago. At the end of the movie, some of my friends and I agreed that we found that one line to be more interesting than the rest of the movie. That is not what a movie is supposed to make the audience feel
All in all, this is not a movie that is a must see. Perhaps the fans of the novel it's based on will enjoy this movie more than I did. Still I would not recommend spending your money to watch it in the cinema. If anything just wait for the DVD/Blu-ray release. It's a watchable movie because of Woodley's performance, and I appreciate the effort but I can't say I enjoyed it.