Review... Divergent, The Movie

Not gonna give away too much of the story, but I'd been wanting to see it for a while now.  I like teen flicks, sometimes.  Mortal Instruments is amazing.  Ok, not amazing.. But thoroughly enjoyable.

And no, I haven't gotten around to reading either of the books yet.  I hope to at some point, but not yet.

What did I think...

The names of the factions are kinda hard to follow at times.  Dauntless, got it.  Cando, easy.  The others?  Can't tell you beyond 'Peaceful, Selfless and Smarty-pants'  Sure, I could look them up but this is a review after having JUST watched it, and I'd rather not.

While I get some of it, and the story was sort of engaging, Tris has a Mary-Sue quality that's kinda annoying.  And the morals of everyone are brought into question.

Here's the sad catch, at least for me.

I might read it at some point, but I already know how it ends.  Wikipedia took care of that for me.  I don't do that with stories I give a damn about, only ones I'll never read/watch or something I see as 'meh, can't make it worse'.

As a stand alone film, it wasn't bad.  I enjoyed how she was able to get past some of her inner demons and to me, proved she was born to be Dauntless... Despite everything saying she was a Divergent and belonged in more than one.

Kinda like Harry Potter being Slytherin or Gryffindor, only without as many moments of seeing exactly how she could have been the other two.  At least in the movie.

Oh, and I won't share what the other two are.  They don't in the movie, only in the books I guess.

As to this whole 'plan' thing, it doesn't make sense to me.  How he heck could a person live as only one major 'virtue', if you will, for their whole life?  Even in Harry Potter, they showed that it was more than Brave, Smart, Sneaky and whatevers left.  Everyone had the capacity to be something else.

But here, once you chose it's an all or nothing world.

Perhaps that's where I have my problems.  I don't do well with all or nothing worlds.  I want to have a choice.  I'm 32, single and trying to start my own business.  Until about 50 years ago, I would have been seen as an old maid and long past my prime of ever finding a husband. My only real goal in life, was to get married and have kids.

One or the other.  No other options.

This brings to mind two other discussions, but I'll save them for another time.

If you're looking for a cute teen 'coming of age' movie, this is a good one and deserves say.. 3 outta 5 stars.

If you're looking to have long talks about what the story is about, read the books instead the movie would only be worth about 2 out of 5 stars.

Kristy C