The “Harry Potter” movie series has come to a close and the “Twilight” film finale is this November. So inevitably Hollywood needed a new blockbuster franchise based on a popular book series to latch on to. Enter “The Hunger Games” – part one of a three-book series aimed at a similar audience. This first film certainly has more substance to it than the “Twilight” movies, and a more serious tone than the “Potter” series.
“The Hunger Games” is set in futuristic North America (called Panem), which, following a catastrophic war, has been divided into 12 districts. Jennifer Lawrence (Oscar nominee for 2010’s “Winter’s Bone”) stars as Katniss Everdeen. She lives in the poorest district, #12, with her younger sister, Primrose, and her mother. She also has a boyfriend named Gale (played by Liam Hemsworth). Each year Panem conducts “The Hunger Games”, in which one boy and one girl from each district between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen at random to compete in a fight to the death in an arena, which is televised live across the nation. There are 24 contestants (called tributes) and only one can come out alive.
Primrose gets selected, but Katniss volunteers to take her place and be the female tribute. The male selected is Peeta (“Journey 2″‘s Josh Hutcherson), who’s anxious to fight, but believes that he’s not going to survive. Each of the tributes gets special training for a few weeks, so they can be prepared for the competition. Woody Harrelson is quite good in the role of Haymitch, the District 12 mentor. He does what he can to try to prepare Katniss and Peeta for…The Hunger Games.
The first hour or so is very good. We meet a lot of characters, including Stanley Tucci’s over-the-top talk show host (though Tucci’s likeable in pretty much every movie he’s in from “Julie & Julia” to “Captain America”), District 12’s wacky head official, played by an almost unrecognizable Elizabeth Banks. And singer Lenny Kravitz is good as Katniss’ stylist. The early scenes at the Reaping, when the two candidates are chosen, and star treatment they receive leading-up to the games are well done.
But this is one of those movies where the set-up is better than the pay-off. Once the actual fighting competition begins, “The Hunger Games” slowly loses its appeal. After one nice surprising touch, the movie becomes a long, drawn-out, deadly version of “Survivor”, with no twists or surprises. And unlike most of the rest of the world, I didn’t read the books so I didn’t know what was coming. Some of those who did are likely to be even more disappointed with obvious way the story plays out.
If “The Hunger Games” was a stand-alone film, I would be blasting the ending as a cop-out. And yes, series writer Suzanne Collins also co-wrote the screenplay. But that’s always the problem with a movie version of part 1 of a book series. If the writer actually had the guts to make some serious decisions involving main characters, which would make the movie much more interesting, those characters wouldn’t be around for the next book or the next movie.
Along with “Survivor” it’s impossible not to see plenty of “The Truman Show” and even “American Idol” in “The Hunger Games”, which allows for a fair
amount of social commentary on reality TV and celebrity status in our society. And, for the most part, the message is very effective.
The plot does have a few holes in it, especially during the games when characters do things they would never do in similar situations in real life, but the film is well-shot and nicely directed with an authentic look by Gary Ross and the performances, led by Lawrence and Hutcherson are pretty outstanding.
“The Hunger Games” is rated PG-13 for some intense action/violence, mostly involving teens killing other teens. There’s a good amount of blood and some inappropriate images for younger ones. In fact, because of it’s theme and violent images, this is about as close to an “R” rating as a movie can get without actually getting one.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “The Hunger Games” gets a B-. For those not caught-up in the hype (like me) this is a good, but not great film.
The second movie in the series, “Catching Fire”, is scheduled to be released November 22nd, 2013. Until then, as they say in the film (over and over and over): May the odds be ever in your favor.