baylaust Reviews: The Hunger Games

[baylaust 2,531]

A lot of people tend to compare The Hunger Games to Twilight. I hate this comparison for three reasons:

1. The Hunger Games is actually good.

2. Anyone can like it, not just tweens and 40+ year old moms.

3. It's not about the romance (though I admit, the tweens TRY to make it about the romance).

With that being said, now that Twilight is on its way out of the world (thank God), The Hunger Games is stepping in to fill the void left by that 5 year nightmare to cinema. With an incredible amount of hype surrounding it, can The Hunger Games meet these expectations, or even surpass them, or will it fall short? I've watched it, and here is my review.

 

Keep in mind that this is MY review of the movie. Your opinion may very well differ from mine.

 

I would also like to point out that I did read all three of the books, and I did enjoy them. However, I will not be making ANY comparisons to the books in this review. I will be judging it as a movie, and a movie alone.

 

Story

In the year.... future, North America has been turned into a continent called Panem, ruled by an oppressive Capitol. The Capitol split Panem into thirteen Districts. When they rebelled against the Capitol, they nuked District 13 to silence it. Now, for punishment, every district must send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12-18 every year to compete in the annual Hunger Games, a last man standing battle to the death shown on live television. During the drawing for the 74th Hunger Games, when her 12 year old sister is chosen to go into the games, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her place. With fellow Tribute Peeta Melark, Katniss must prepare herself to fight against the odds in the upcoming death sentence.

 

The movie does a great job of creating the world of Panem, and the vast differences between the Districts and the Capitol. You do get attached to this world, and you grow to care about these people. It would have been nice to have seen more of the backstory of how everything became the way it is now. They glance over it once or twice, but we never get a real sense of everything that has happened in the past. One thing I liked is that they added a few little commentator sections. When something new is added that the audience not familiar with the books might miss, two commentators for the Hunger Games appear on screen commenting on the current situation, and inform the audience about what is happening. This is a clever trick to make sure people who haven't read the books aren't left in the dark.

 

The characters are portrayed excellently, mostly due to the actors portraying them. There was a moment or two that began to pull at my strings, even for characters I haven't known for very long. However, the main love story felt a little bit forced in my opinion. I realize, without going into specifics, that it is supposed to be, but it would have been better if the movie did a better job of explaining that.

 

Acting

I already mentioned this earlier, but the acting in this is, for lack of a better word, awesome. Jennifer Lawrence is the star of the show with her fantastic portrayal of Katniss. She manages to convey so much emotion through both her speaking, her expressions, and even the most subtle body language, that it really is quite amazing. Josh Hutcherson also does a great job at playing Peeta, probably the second time I've seen Josh really show his talents in movies (the first being in Bridge to Terrabithia [although that wasn't a great movie]). There isn't a single weak link that I could identify in the cast. Hell, even LENNY KRAVITZ did a good job of playing Cinna, Katniss's clothes designer. Absolutely no complaints here.

 

Presentation

As I said earlier, the film does a great job of creating the world in which The Hunger Games takes place in. The Districts all look like old, run down small towns where everyone is struggling to survive, and the Capitol looks exactly like you think a city in the future would look like, complete with some extremely creative costume designs for its inhabitants. Since the film uses practical effects for a good majority of the movie, the few times that CG is used are noticeable, but don't really detract from anything.

 

The soundtrack is great and really compliments the events happening on screen... when it's there. However, the film tends to go long stretches in silence, with a few major moments given soundtrack cues. I can understand that this may have been done to make the world feel more realistic (which is why I put up with some of the shakey cam at the beginning), but a bit more music would have helped as well. Also, the movie runs at two and a half hours long, and it takes about 40 minutes to and hour for the movie to really pick up. It did suffer from some pacing issues, and overall, a good 20 minutes probably could have been cut altogether.

 

I know that they wanted to keep this movie at a PG rating, but overall, I definitely think it would have benifited, as an experience, from an R rating. Half of the movie is about kids murdering each other, and because they have to keep the violence in check, they have to do a ridiculous amount of quick cuts and camera movements during any action scenes to avoid showing the actual deaths on screen. This makes things hard to understand, and the film looks more sloppy as a result.

 

Verdict

I had a bit of trouble making up my mind, but in the end, I thought The Hunger Games was:

 

Good!

The movie did a great job of creating a world and characters that you really do care about while keeping newcomers to the series informed, and the acting truly is amazing. However, it also suffers from pacing issues, a noticeably long run time, and some sloppy camerawork due to the director trying to keep the movie PG. I was really on the fence on whether this movie was Great or not, but what did it for me was that this movie had everything it needed to possibly be Awesome, and it fell short of that due to a bunch of truly stupid mistakes, with really did disappoint me. Don't get me wrong, I do think it is a Great movie, and I recommend seeing it. However, I can't deny that it had the potential to be better, much better, than it turned out. Here's hoping they get some of these issues worked out by the time Catching Fire comes out.

 

So, have you seen The Hunger Games? What did you think? Was I too harsh or too leniant? Did I miss anything? Let me know.

 

baylaust out.

Edited March 31, 2012 by baylaust

[Robbie the Wise 5,050]

good review as always baylaust

[Junko 2,815]

i just got back from watching the movie. it was good

[Oathkeeper#13 25]

*spoiler* The Ginger died cuz she ate some berries........

[AJTREY 70]

Honestly, anything is better than Twilight in my opinion. It is just such a different idea from what love actually is: love at first sight, bah!

[TheApprenticeofKingMickey 3,689]

I think this conveys most of my actual opinion on the movie. Good job baylaust.

 

EDIT: I just realized, how did I end up quoting myself?

Edited March 31, 2012 by TheApprenticeofKingMickey

[wayfinder823 477]

THE SHAKY CAMERA WAS THE WORRRSSSTT!!! I am so glad I didn't eat before I watched that movie! And they had a ton of tight close-up scenes, that made me feel like I couldn't breathe!

You're exactly right about the rating. It would have portrayed scenes in better detail if they went for R, but.. majority of the audience is teenagers.

As for the acting you stated--I didn't find it "amazing" as you said. I thought they did a good job, but not quite an "awesome" job. Liam, the guy who plays Gale... is kind of a crappy actor, so it's kind of good he didn't have too many lines in this one. And Haymitch seemed like he was trying to impersonate Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow, rather than playing a hungover drunk that's trying to be sober for a couple days.

But everything else you said I felt is pretty spot on.

Good job!

[Rinax 473]

My friends and I are going to see the movie tomorrow. I have yet to read the books due to like, 90 plus requests for the (first) book at our public library...

Thanks for giving the review as I'll probably enjoy it.

[echo 69]

I got motion sickness from the shaking camera....):

[TheApprenticeofKingMickey 3,689]

The shaky camera was the worst. My cousin and I were complaining about it on the ride home.

Edited March 31, 2012 by TheApprenticeofKingMickey