Forever dumb

Divergent, a super dud of a movie, had a lot going for it.

For starters, it’s based on a blockbuster series of teen targeted novels and that often means box office gold nowadays. It has a strong cast, including Kate Winslet and both Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller of The Spectacular Now. It also has a semi-reliable director in Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist).

What it also has going for it is that it might be a great over-the-counter solution for insomniacs. Forget those prescriptions for sleeping pills or overdosing on Nyquil when you don’t even have a runny nose. Divergent will put your ass to sleep.

Boring … BORE-ING!

Woodley stars as Beatrice, a member of an alleged post-apocalyptic society where people are divided up into factions: Abnegation (The Selfless), Erudite (The Intelligent), Amity (The island where Jaws was set … oh no, wait, I’m sorry … The Peaceful), Candor (The Honest) and Dauntless (The Brave).

Beatrice is set to become an adult, and part of becoming an adult is being tested for a faction to belong in, and then choosing a faction to join. She comes up as a Divergent, someone who can’t be classified by a faction, but she tells everybody she’s an Abnegate like her mom and dad (Ashley Judd and Tony Goldwyn). She then chooses to join Dauntless because she wants to run around and laugh and climb stuff.

Of course, she will have some trouble along the way, and be found out for what she really is: Unclassifiable. So what?

Winslet shows up as Jeanine, an Erudite with a mysterious whiff of evil. I imagine she’s the Darth Vader of this silly saga. Teller gets what feels like a tacked-on role as Peter, a member of Dauntless who gives Beatrice a hard time. It’s hard to watch these two very talented performers slumming in such stereotypical, unexciting parts.

Does the movie have sad, yearning, doe-eyed romance? You bet it does! Four (Theo James), a high-ranking member of Dauntless, sets eyes upon Tris—Beatrice changes her name so as to be cooler—and sparks fly. They can’t consummate just yet, because this is a tween romance, and all tween romances have the requisite brooding. They eventually find an excuse to show off their tattoos.

The whole enterprise is remarkably lacking in tension, humor, creativity, originality, pancakes and focus. It’s a muddled affair that looks downright bad at times. There’s one sequence, when Tris rides a zip line between abandoned Chicago skyscrapers, that actually had me interested. That sequence is only a few minutes long, and it represents the film’s one highlight.

Visually, the film lacks any real spark. It starts promisingly with a relatively cool flight over a decaying Chicago, but most of the movie involves drab tunnels, dull costuming and bad lighting. As for the staging of action sequences, Tris gets knives thrown at her face, and Berger manages to render the moment completely uninteresting.

This futuristic world, created by Veronica Roth in her novels, is lacking in cinematic distinction. It also seems to be a big middle finger toward the SATs. I’m curious to know what Roth scored on that particular test. Perhaps she’s bitter about mass categorical testing.

Maybe there’s some hope for the Divergent series. A new director is set to take over for Burger, although that director is the remarkably inconsistent Robert Schwentke, who directed Red, The Time Traveler’s Wife and the miserable R.I.P.D. Both the Harry Potter and Hunger Games franchises got off to false starts but found their footing. Heck, even Twilight almost got tolerable as it rolled along.

Divergent, unfortunately, gets filed alongside the likes of last year’s The Host for now. It’s a tween wannabe franchise completely lacking teeth with a good central female star in the lead. I have faith that Woodley can pull this one out of the fire and make it worthwhile in future installments. I also have faith that I never want to see this flat first chapter again, unless I have a really bad cold and need something to knock me out.