MOVIE REVIEW: The Divergent Series: Allegiant

The next installment in the hugely popular series arrives.  This time it looks as though they have traded one tyrant for a civil war, Tris, four, and their friends plan to escape the city and you can pretty much write everything that happens after that.

With each of these young adult movies that reaches the end I breathe a sigh of relief.  I know that I’m not the target market, I don’t think I ever was, because back when I was a young adult we had John Hughes giving us them.  They were real, things that we wish we were going through, like that time I wanted to wear pink to the prom, wait that was Molly Ringwald, amazing how often I confuse myself with Queen Molly.  Now they rely on that bleak futuristic landscape were everything is awful for moody teenagers, or they have Werewolves and Sparkly Vampires who Christopher Lee would snap in half within two seconds.  I’m going to point out that I don’t mind sci-fi or horror, just not the watered down rubbish that normally hits our screens these days.

The first two Divergent films I had enjoyed more than all of The Hunger Games, and most of the other young adult offerings that make you want to wash your eyes out with bleach.  The second wasn’t as good as the first but I’ll say that the third film, Allegiant, is slightly better than the second.  But there are a few problems.  The same performances and production levels are there to make the fans happy, with the living characters, and some that I thought were dead, return to bring us a more tense and gripping storyline.  The special effects and use of the advanced technology of the new city add to the futuristic nature of the story.  The storyline back in the walled city is overlooked and there could have been more attention paid to this during the lagging moments of the middle act.  The new administration falls apart too quickly and the people learn nothing from their past by resorting to animals.  Maybe this bothered me because I go to the cinema for escapism and it’s a little too realistic for the film that is in it.

These films are plagued with the moody teen romance brooding that just gets on the last nerve in my forehead that still feels anything.  Added to the film now is the new beautifully crafted city where Jeff Daniels lives, Jeff plays the Director who is in charge of the city where Tris and co just escaped from.  Having Jeff Daniels as a villain is like having the dog from UP as an evil dictator.  You just don’t believe that the man has an evil bone in his body.

The film sags like a three-day old balloon in the middle of the film while the friends are getting used to their different roles in the new city, and Tris is being wined and dined by the Director, being told the same stuff about her that we were told time and time again in the first two films.  I guess that you have to see a movie through the eyes of the target audience, and because of my probation I can’t cut any eyes out of any young adults, at least for a couple of years, stupid courts, so I tried to put myself in their shoes.  No one misses shoes these days.  The film will satisfy the fans of the first two films and the books.  When leaving the cinema I overheard someone say that there was going to be another film, which made sense to me, although if they decided to leave the story where they did then I’d accept leaving the world there.

With these films with solid fan bases it doesn’t matter what any reviewer says about the film, you are going to see this film no matter what I say.  I don’t like that, you should be listening to me more, in every aspect of your life.  It’s not awful, it does better than the second film, but then again it would be hard to do worse, I still think that a few more passes with the script could have done wonders.  The fans will enjoy.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

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Garth Cremona (RIP)

Comic book creator and movie reviewer. You can find out more at www.dublinwriter.com

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