Predictable & Stale, “Allegiant” Could Be The Year’s Worst Film.
I’ll start this review off by saying I am no means the target demographic for the Divergent franchise. I’m not a ‘young adult’ nor am I a fan of the film sub-genre as a whole. Since Harry Potter stormed the theaters in 2001, these teen books have made for box office success so Divergent’s newest film “Allegiant” was looking to bank off that. This led to a weak third entry that didn’t do its audience any favors by phoning it in. These problems like the laughably predictability or the horrendous CGI are not what we should be teaching young movie-goers.
Under different direction & marketed to an age group just slightly older, it would be a fairly decent ‘Summer Blockbuster’. But alas, we get yet another stale March release. The praises for the film are short but there is some. When the sets were not infused or completely covered in visual effects, the practical sets are wonderful. The entire art department did well with their wardrobe & tattoos as well as the weapons used in combat.
The plot centers around Tris, a divergent young women who is fighting for the freedom of the people in her post-apocalyptic city of Chicago. She helped lead a revolution against the status quo and in turn, Tris has opened up the city for a bigger problem…an all out war. With her rag-tag team of misfits, she finally crosses the wall that keeps Chicago from the rest of the world. What Tris finds beyond the wall is more lies from people she was hoping to trust.
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Admittedly, I’ve never seen any of the films in the franchise before this but I instantly knew each character’s tropes and how they would play out later on. From Peter being the most obvious bad-guy to the mysterious David not being who Tris hoped he would be, you can call out what will happen as soon as a character appears on screen. This led to a lack of tension as I could predict what would come next; even down to what some of the characters would say in a certain situations.
My biggest gripe with “Allegiant” is the CGI. It was laughable; it felt like I was watching a Sy-Fy Network movie at times. No film with an estimated budget of 110-120 million should suffer that bad. The worst examples were the actors obviously standing in front of a blue-screen having to act off nothing or those horrid orange bubble blobs that made random appearances.
All in all, I can see this film ending up in the 5 Dollar Bin at Walmart or jumbled into a 4-pack of other failed young adult films. Unless you are a die-hard fan of the novels, skip “Allegiant” at all cost.
