More than a Hunger Games ripoff

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2015)

This movie has me torn and may qualify as a guilty pleasure. While clearly in the same category of Young Adult novel adaptation as the mega-successful Hunger Games trilogy, this first installment of the Divergent series has some obvious similarities and some differences. I think the similarity that has me liking this movie is the strong female lead played wonderfully by Shailene Woodley. However, Divergent's dialog is weaker, its plot more obvious, and its philosophy delivered more heavy-handedly; all-in-all making it the inferior of the two series' initial installments.
I understand that the movie also sanitized some of the more violent aspects of the book in order to avoid the harsher R-rating which would have hurt its box office potential. Such loss hurts the movie as the danger element is not as apparent as one would like to better vest the viewer in the trials of the lead character.
Are these flaws enough to make the film unwatchable? No. Are the strengths of the movie (Ms. Woodley, good CGI and production design) enough to give the movie a strong recommendation to watch? No, too. However, if you are a fan of science fiction and action- adventure (whose body count is high but whose gore is very limited), you too make like this movie. But if you are looking for Oscar-caliber movie-making, this is not for you.