5000 Swooning 12 Year Olds

Saw the Divergent movie a couple days ago based on the first book in the Divergent series.  A couple of my station sisters have been reading the books with me and wanted to go see it.  Of course the only day we all had free was opening night, so off to buy our tickets we went.  We bribed the boys with Bourbon Carmel Milkshakes (sooooo yummy!) and off we went.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

The movie was OK, it seemed to be sanded down from the original story to more generic teeny bopper gook, they took out a lot of the tensenes between the Dauntless recruits and replaced it with lovey dovey gush.  They also changed to format of the challenges which kind of sucked  because I thought that was one of the best parts of the book. The producers or writers seemed to have the same problem with the faction premise that I did and mentioned Human Nature being a problem on a couple of occasions to try and nod to the fact that the way factions are set up would never really work.  I did like the casting for the most part, Zoe Kravitz as Christina was probably the best character in the movie (and one of my favorites in the book).  She looked the part, acted the part and generally kicked butt.  I liked the casting of Eric as well, he did not follow the book description but Jai Courtney played the cool cruelty like a pro.  Shailene Woodley as Tris was fine and Theo James as Four is hot and brooding, but nothing super special.  Over all I wanted to see more of

 Tris's journey like we did in the book, the struggle to shed her Stiff personality and become who she really is never came clear in the movie.  It was a weird mix of the movie trying to pack everything in and yet not really hitting any of the main points.  The other unique experiance I had with this movie is seeing it on opening night with 5000 swooning teenage girls who added their own special soundtrack and entertainment value to the whole proceedings.  The Chicago scenes were pretty cool, it's weird seeing somewhere you lived all decrepit and blown up (even if the stupid pink building survived) so that was nice.  Over all it had a very generic teeny bopper feel that did not capture the best parts of the book, and did nothing to dispel my dislike of the faction system.  The music was pretty awesome though. I will probably not watch it again, but I am glad I saw it at least once and will be interested to see where they go with the second and third book and movies.  But I think I will stick to the Hunger Games.

What did you think of the movie compared to the book?  Is it possible to do a YA book as a movie and not make it teeny boppery?  Am I a horrible wife for dragging Hubbin to see this?