Went to see an early showing of Divergent, the latest adapted-from-a-YA-novel flick starring (yeesh) Shaileene Woodley, Jai Courtney, Kate Winslett, Ashley Judd, Zoe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwynn, Maggie Q, and a few other actors whose faces you know but you can’t place them (hint: Tony Goldwynn was the bad guy in Ghost). Anyhow, this is a well produced, well acted adaptation of the novel that excels where the book excels and fails where it fails. I’m not 100% sure it’ll all make sense for folk who hadn’t read the book. My memory of the book tells me the flick was pretty accurate to it. And, yeah, it was fine. Hunger Games was better. Mortal Instruments was worse. It got a PG13 which is pretty noticeably tamed down from where the movie needed to be given the level of violence and death in the book. They couldn’t go for an R (obviously) but that does make the movie slightly less edgy than it clearly wants to be.

Probably should note that the movie is a distopian sci-fi action flick about a future Chicago (partially in ruins after an unspecified war) where society is divided into 5 factions (the brave, the selfless, the happy, the truthful, and the intelligent). Our hero Tris finds out she doesn’t fit in any one of the factions (she’s divergent) and if anyone finds this out, they’ll likely kill her. So she joins Dauntless – the courageous faction (also, the extroverted Type A psychopaths) and the movie is largely about her training (and getting the crap kicked out of her in a PG13 way). And it’s about politics and attempted take overs which is the weakest part of the story as Tris only knows so much and the movie doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining the situation (also, as noted, a problem with with the book).

Also, Shaileen Woodley is pretty great in it but things get into this meta 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon type thing since she costars with Miles Teller who was her love interest in the wonderful movie The Spectacular Now… here he beats the crap out of her and generally hates her. The dude playing her love interest in the upcoming film The Fault In Our Stars plays her brother in this one… so apparently Hollywood YA Novel Adaptation land is a small, small world.

Score: 79