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Insurgent continues a series tradition by being a painfully generic pubescent daydream preaching a cookie cutter message about being a special snowflake.
Pros:
- Some special effects sequences look nice, capturing the jarring dissonance of a bad dream. Some practical sets are comparatively inviting next to the rest of the film, although it’s always more exciting to climb over rubble than to walk down a hallway.
- Octavia Spencer delivers her role briefly, with more professionalism and emotion than the rest of the cast combined. While Miles Teller plays an insufferable little Malfoy-analogue, his comic relief delivery provides the only respite from the smothering hammy seriousness of it all.
- The one time director Robert Schwentke shines is an early scramble to and alongside a moving train. He captures a rollicking propulsion that actually manages to make the cast exciting. It’s the one action scene that feels fun, dangerous, and physical.
Cons:
- Shailene Woodley is no Jennifer Lawrence. She’s operating with much lower-tiered material, but nevertheless, with her shrill squeals punctuating every action, she lacks charisma as an action lead or empathy as a dramatic audience conduit. Her transitions from bemused detachment to flowing waterworks are abrupt and often, and her tragedies feel stilted rather than tangible. It’s hard to care that your mother is dead if you get to hug her in every other computer simulation/dream/don’t ask.
- Kate Winslet reads her childish exposition with a palpable disdain saturating her every moment on-screen. Theo James and Ansel Elgort play two sides of an uninterested coin, the brooding lover and brother of Woodley, respectively. The skills they employ during the film include staring woodenly into the distance, staring obstinately into the distance, and stubbornly refusing to look directly at our protagonist. Riveting.
- Now, it’s not these poor actors’ fault. Simplistic, vapid, dystopia-in-a-picture-book writing dooms the cast to an uphill battle. Much of it isn’t bad, just painfully obvious to anyone familiar with the young adult genre, any sort of dystopic fiction, or teenagers in general. Other parts aren’t so lucky, warping logic to fit into the convoluted labyrinth of the source material. Woodley at one point admits “I know this doesn’t make any sense”. I like to think this was out of character, and she was addressing someone off camera, trying to convince them that she didn’t understand this thing either.
- This unfortunate writing corrupts the story, the dialogue, and the characters. It’s impossible to blame any one person, because three writers received credit for the script, which in turn was based on Hunger Games knock-off source material. Like a collaborative version of the Food Network show Chopped, this film had too many cooks going in different directions with the most bland ingredients imaginable. The plot’s obsession with being different, the laughably milquetoast writing, and the story’s MacGuffin-driven engine can be summed by one line from Winslet’s antagonist: “Find me the very special one”.
- Some background green-screening looks sloppy (the environment lacks a realistic depth of field compared to the actors, so it looks like they’re walking in front of a picture), as do some of the effects. A truth serum is applied with an amateurish needle prop so obvious you almost think someone’s pushing the lead back into their mechanical pencil while pretending that it’s going into their arm.
Final Thoughts:
Insurgent doesn’t know why it does the things it does. A character shoots another in the head. For love? For revenge? Does it affect him late at night? Eat away at him? We’ll never know. He did it because the bad guy was there and his time in the narrative was up.
Why does our lead cut off her hair at the start of the film? For something different. Just to FEEL something. I could accept this, accept an identity crisis, if it wasn’t acted like petulant rebellion.
A movie doesn’t know why it does the things it does when dreams that should be shocking, or poignant, or terrifying inspire gales of laughter from the audience. Insurgent has no handle on tone, no control over its broad angst. A central love story looks and feels like every other. A central villain looks and feels like every other. And they all pop in and out without stimulus, willed into existence to sell merchandise at Hot Topic.
Insurgent pleads to an assumed teenage certainty that they’re the most important, special beings in the universe.
Approaching the exploitation of this dissociation from society in the fashion most suited to the lowest common denominator, Insurgent manages to insult those it panders to.
Excellent review, this sounds extremely shitty.
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HEH – something I doubt I’ll ever watch : ) Long live Shitfest : )
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Long Live Shitfest and Long Live Raising Hell.
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You got that right, boss!
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Hope the movie is going well, plenty of sexiness.
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So far so good, I reckon!
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Keep rocking on brother.
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I thought this film was a total bore-fest. Good review.
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Sounds like it!
#truth
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wow! what a shitty review of a real shitty movie 🙂
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Sounds terrible….
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What a childhood throwback, pretending to inject someone with a mechanical pencil! Good memories. Never saw this silly film though!
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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah sweet memories of those little blue scars on your stomach…..
#scarsies
#pencilsies
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Nice work. I am mildly interested in seeing this after watching the first, but I don’t have high hopes. At all.
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Enjoy, Gramma!
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A poor man’s Hunger Games fo sho.
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HA!! Happy fucking Tuesday!
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This review is way too highbrow and thoughtful for a site such as this.
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Two days worth of powerful and profound commentary about my place here. Congrats!
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Please put my comments on the back of your DVD.
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Will do.
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this site is full of shit!!
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I know : ((((((((((((((((((((((( !!
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Great review! I saw the first one and was okay with it but really couldn’t be bothered to try this out. Dystopia, dystopia everywhere!
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Sweet Kidney Giuseppe!!!!!!!!
Screw this!
Love,
Sugar Pappy!
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Brilliant review! I haven’t seen this yet but I was completely unimpressed with Divergent. It tried so hard to be another exciting dystopian story like Hunger Games and failed miserably. The books were marginally better.
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I have no interest to see this whatsoever! HA!!
Woo hop!
#lovekim
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Definitely do not waste your time on this Eric. There are so many other shitty movies to watch and have fun skewering!😈
#woohop
#loveeric
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I’ve got some coming your way after Shitfest!!
#woohop
#lovekim
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You’re the Best!
#woohopping
#loveeric
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YOU ARE!!!
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#hugs
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#hugs
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Great review!! I hated this movie so much. Couldn’t even appreciate it a little, and you’re right! She does squeal a lot. How annoying!
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#satanicbestie !!!!
Nice to hear from you my dear!
#mopeyzombiemovies
#sataniclampsalways
#creepsforever
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Urgh, this sounds totally… generic. Pound shop fodder at its most banal.
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Sounds shit to me!!
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What a load of shit.
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Amen.
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Concise comment for the win
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I’m the winner!
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Some of the thoughts here gave me a good laugh. I have no desire to see this after seeing Divergent, which as you alluded to in the opening paragraph, is horridly shitty
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These sound like a couple of movies that might find me hanging from a rope by the end of them….
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yeah…. that isn’t much over an overstatement, they really are that bad
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I better not check them out then…..
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If you value your sanity, stay away!!!
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Understood, amigo!
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I like Shailene Woodley a lot, and think she’s a great up and coming actress, but I just don’t think she fits the bill as “action star”. Cute, sweet girl next door like in “Spectacular Now” is her forte; she was great in “Fault in our Stars”, as well. But I didn’t even bother to watch the CGI filled Divergent…
Last time I went to the movies (Mad Max, i think) I passed by the “Insurgent” theater and the ushers forgot to close the door, so you could hear the movie – and the dialogue sounded so generic. I think Kate Winslet was telling Woodley’s character something about her mother. It sounded so dull and boring.
Looks like I made the right choice by skipping this and Divergent.
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I think we’ve both made good calls here….
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Nice review! 🙂 Screw this movie. I couldn’t be bothered with it after watching the first one…
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You….. you…. you want to screw this movie…..????
#Wanker !!
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No – only Fury Road!!!!! 🙂
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OK GOOD!!!
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That’s. . . that’s kind of hot actually.
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LOL
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Divergent, Insurgent, Detergent, Astringent…
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HA!!!!
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“Insurgent pleads to an assumed teenage certainty that they’re the most important, special beings in the universe.” Perfect.
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I find the concept for this series reminds me of a high school creative writing project. The world of the future is just as a teenager would imagine it to be and the five factions are exactly how they would see different types of people. I do love Miles Teller though. So many talented actors are wasted here.
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I haven’t seen them but I imagine you make a great point!
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This movie was about 3 hours longer than it needed to be and yes…. I know it wasn’t 3 hours long.
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HA!!!
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Ugh. I read the books and this was certainly my least favourite of the trilogy, and I HATED the first movie so I had no hope for this one. It would appear that I was bang on the money! Great work!
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