Friday Film Review-The Hunger Games(2012)

Those of you who read my review of the book know that I am not a fan of The Hunger Games. What irked me most about the book was the feeling I had that the author, Suzanne Collins, was under the impression that she had created something new, when, in reality books  stories of dystopia  and stories about children being cruel abound. Secondly, if Collins was making a point I'm not sure what it was. Character development, inner turmoil, drama- these were things that were all absent from the book. Furthermore, I didn't like what the book had to say about feminism. Prim and her mother are both presented as weak, fragile characters while Katniss is only strong because she is 'like a man'. But, I digress.  Perhaps because it is a story about television and what we are willing to watch on television I thought that the book translated well to the big screen. In The Hunger Games what was once North America is now divided into 12 Districts, collectively called Panem. Each year, one teenage boy and one teenage girl from each district are sent to an arena where they must fight to the death, all on live television. This is to meant to keep the population under control, meanwhile in the Capitol the bigwigs live the high life. There are, for this reviewer, some issues with this plot in general. The logic of having children fight to the death is a bit convoluted. Nonetheless, this is a review of the film and in that sense the film was well done. The idea that we are desensitized by the images we are bombarded with came across nicely in scenes where the contestants were dressed up and paraded around days before they will be brutally killed. Jennifer Lawrence delivered a solid performance as Katniss and the rest of the cast was equally strong, or at least no one stood out as significantly better or worse.  The music and costuming were well done,although same as in the book, I'm not sure what the idea behind the absolutely ridiculous costumes was. The relationship between Katniss and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) was well done, and, in fact,made more painful by the fact that we could see the exression on Gale's (Liam Hemsworth). In the end it was details like this that made it a good watch. Some will argue that there were things from the book that were left out but I would not necessarily say, in this case, that that was a bad thing.

Bottom Line:  Not a masterpiece but certainly a good watch.
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