The Hunger Games
UA Court Street, March 26, 2012
Movie #15 for 2012
Wow, you guys, this it going to be a tough review to write.
I really enjoyed the book, want to like this film and I am righteously indignant about much of the criticism levelled at it. I’m finding it so hard to be objective about the film - to drown out the opinions of others and divorce the film from the book and the process of adaptation - that I’ve decided not to bother.
In the future, an all powerful Capitol demands tributes each year from it’s twelve oppressed districts - a boy and a girl between 12 and 18, chosen at random to compete in the Hunger Games where they will fight to the death in a televised event. Katniss Everdeen (JENNIFER LAWRENCE, Winter’s Bone, X-Men: First Class, pictured) volunteers when her little sister Prim is selected and she and Peeta Mellark (JOSH HUTCHERSON, The Kids Are All Right) go off to be killed on national television.
I have criticisms of my own of the film - the screenplay is a bit of mess and, even though it would have been hard to adapt Katniss’ complex interior monologues, the film really suffers from simplifying her motivations; there is way too much shaky-wakey, zoomy-woomey handheld camera from a director who should have known better (GARY ROSS, Pleastantville)
But I also like that the film’s lead is a young, resourceful, pragmatic woman who - despite several opportunities in the source material - does not take her shirt off once. And the young leads are really very good - Lawrence and Hutcherson have been very well cast.
The film is coping flack for being derivative of other unwilling-participants-kill-each-other-for-the-entertainment-of-others movies (that humungous and well established genre), but that massively misses the point. Yes, The Hunger Games has part of its premise in common with Battle Royale and Series 7: The Contenders but I didn’t hear anyone up in arms because Mission Impossible 4: Mission Impossiblest was derivative of, oh I don’t know, every other action film that’s ever come before it.
If I had to be objective - and it’s a struggle - I would say that The Hunger Games is an action movie of slightly bigger than average brain… but not as good as the book. (Phew, that was tough!)
