The Le Teen Café Review Corner: Divergent (The Movie)

Remember when I wrote that post about why you should join the Divergent fandom? If I had to write that again, I would not include the movie. I hate being a hater. I seriously do, but this movie wasn’t fantastic or good. It was just okay. And I’m not saying this because I had big expectations; in fact I knew, since I had read the book, that the adaptation was going to be difficult. Then, why did I not like the movie?

In my opinion, the screenplay was terrible. Consequently, the romance between Tris and Four seemed a little bit to childish and corny. On the other hand, I did like the cast, but they couldn’t do any better with that script. Shailene as Tris was a great pick and Ashley Judd was fantastic. Their relationship was one of the best things about the movie. It was credible and sweet but it couldn’t make up for the mistakes that existed in the dialogues between Tris and Four. I actually laughed in the cinema at some lines.

As I said before, the casting choices were absolutely perfect. Many people say that Jai Courtney as Eric was a horrible choice but I honestly think that they are wrong. Jai was wonderful. He nailed his character. There are no better words to describe how I enjoyed his performance.

There’s one thing that I definitely loved about this movie: the way they captured the post-apocalyptic world.  Chicago, the hometown of the main character, Tris, looked stunning and breathtaking. Seriously, I couldn’t have asked for a better setting. The fence looked spectacular and I love the Dauntless’s headquarters. Also, I loved how we can see the differences between the five factions, especially how you immediately fall in love with the Dauntless faction and you want to become part of this wild family (even if they are completely nuts).

This movie had everything to be amazing, but the writers failed and that ruined the whole thing. I also noticed that sometimes the movie was really slow, it almost became boring. This was a serious issue because I paid more attention to their lines and I could immediately spot the mistakes on the screenplay. Nevertheless, there was a big contrast between the beginning of the movie and the end. The beginning looked like a sloth and then, bam!, the sloth turned into a cheetah. It wasn’t consistent. And by the way, the fight scenes were stunning.

Overall, in a scale of 1 to 10, I would give this movie a solid 6. The graphics looked fantastic, the casting was excellent, but the script and the lack of coherence ruined the movie. I hope they change the writers for the next movie. Oh, and they need to work out the chemistry between Four and Tris.


-Barista Alexandra-

Image: Divergent (movie) poster