Critics reviews

There are so many missed opportunities: Daniels can barely stir himself to plough through his pages of stodgy dialogue, and the effects team deliver some risibly dated and low-budget moments. Throughout, there is a sense that nobody could be bothered to produce a better film. The logic must be that it doesn't matter, because the audience will pay up anyway, but such poverty of ambition makes for a depressing spectacle all the same.

Let's say that a critic is a person whose interest can help to activate the interest of others, writes film critic A.O. Scott in his new book, Better Living Through Criticism. That sounds about right, and yet a more blunt truth is that the film critic sees the movies you won't want to. The latest case in point is The Divergent Series: Allegiant. Try as I might, I cannot activate your interest in this bloated excuse for a movie.

Allegiant confuses and bores with endless scenes of David and others explaining things: how the world got to be this way, how it is now, how it needs to be and so on and so forth. The film at times feels like wall-to-wall exposition — some of it lies, some of it true, all of it awkward. David also needs Tris to testify before some sort of Council, to whom he answers, so that much of the film is building up to…yes, more exposition.

Of the cast, only Teller appears to be having any fun, jesting his way through world-changing crises like a Jeff Goldblum character. The rest of Allegiant, like its predecessors, is handled with deadly seriousness, which has never served a science-fiction universe that doesn't hold up under scrutiny... There's no getting around the fact that Divergent is a clunky apparatus built around a trendy "Chosen One" type.

This penultimate installment in the dour dystopian franchise offers stronger visual effects and more thought-provoking biopunk notions about genetic engineering than the two previous films, but even star Shailene Woodley looks bored... Cautionary tales about eugenics have been told better in literature (Brave New World) and on film (Gattaca), which leaves Woodley and company to repeat some pretty tired tropes.

A flaccid blend of eugenics, purloined children, memory-wiping gas and laughably unlikely scuffles, "Allegiant" offers a weak bridge to the series' conclusion. Whether audiences will still be allegiant after crossing it remains to be seen.

This third instalment in the Divergent series might as well have been called ‘Detergent', because that's what it is: a product that appears under many brands but is really the same basic product, just different packaging.

The task of attempting to spell the word ‘allegiant' is about 18,000 times more exciting than actually having to sit through this dismal YA threequel, which really is the weakest of weak tea. No-one in this movie looks like they're present because they want to be there. It's the cinematic equivalent of jury duty. It's like every cast member has had a loved one kidnapped from them, and as long as they play nice and read the lines, everything will be okay.

Despite four credited writers one often gets the impression that Allegiant was designed by an algorithm trying to please the maximum amount of viewers with the minimum amount of flair or intelligence. Any movie where, about 20 minutes in, the lead character says, "I think we're finally going to be okay," guarantees this is not going to happen, yet it takes Tris a good hour to figure that out while everyone in the audience is already several beats ahead of her.