Divergent

Man, do we love us some young-adult conflict in the movie theaters these days. The latest, Divergent, features a world where people are split into factions based on personality types. The teenagers, after being raised in their parent’s faction, have the choice to switch if they want. In this case, Beatrice (Shailene Woodley) does switch. It’s no too much of a surprise considering the fact that her birth faction, Abnegation, is essentially the burlap sack of factions where mirrors are evil and they eat like they’re Oliver Twist. Instead she chooses Dauntless where they jump from trains, yell stuff in public and get embarrassing 90’s tribal tattoos that they’ll surely never regret.

As far as the YA genre goes, the concept for Divergent is a pretty interesting one. The factions operate like the Hogwarts houses from “Harry Potter” with natural rivals and such. Beatrice, now known by her hipper train jumping name, Trice, has to go through training and making friends, a group of sequences that look very familiar to fans of other YA stories. But the problem with the movie is that this concept is hardly developed before it gets torn apart. Based on the first book of an associated trilogy, I could have used a more straightforward story about life in this world before we get thrown a curve ball.

I don’t have too many big problems with Divergent, but for some reason it just seems like a mix of things we’ve already seen. The world looks like The Hunger Games, the factions are like the Harry Potter houses, they train like in Ender’s Game and they sulk and brood like they’re from Twilight. When you put those elements together I did enjoy the result, but it’s like eating a peanut butter, jelly bean and salami sandwich. After that visual, there’s a good chance I’m going to try that for lunch today.

Each film earns either zero, a half or a full arrow in five categories. The categories are Acting, Writing/Directing, Emotion, Innovation and Overall Impression. The arrows are added up to equal the full score.