Decent Action, Poor Premise

Rating: 5/10 (3 January 2015)

At my wife's behest, I finally gave in and watched The Maze Runner. She had read the books (well, listened on audiobook) and really enjoyed it, and I figured it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that a young-adult novel would stretch reality a bit, but the Maze Runner requires an unfortunate suspension of logic and practicality.
The acting is surprisingly well done on most accounts; the characters themselves are of course walking clichés at times, but overall, not bad for young actors. Of course, they had to pick a girl who happens to look almost exactly like Kristen Stewart, and unfortunately seemed to share quite a bit in common with her character and style of acting.
I am marking this as containing spoilers, but to be honest, I'm not sure how much there is to spoil.
The plot-line is just, well, basically asinine. There are plot-holes you could drive a truck through. Not only are we left without any clue as to how the 'maze challenge' is supposed to be helpful to pretty much anyone, it seems pretty ridiculous to assume one of the last crowning achievements before the fall of civilization would be to build a several trillion dollar state of the art, near impossible to construct maze with bio-engineered bug android things, rather then, say, a laboratory with centrifuges and whatnot, you know, how most diseases are cured.
Unfortunately, it seems the writer of the Maze Runner (novel) went the way of Lost, and even though he may be pretty decent with character dynamics, he seemed to have written himself into a hole with complete nonsense following. Speaking to my wife, the movie only made things muddier, as countless changes were made, and unfortunately they were lateral changes at best, no actual improvements.
Overall, a decent rent, the action is pretty decent, the character dynamics and the acting from some young adults is surprisingly well done, but just check your brain at the door.