The 74th Annual Hunger Games! - Light Action, Light Drama, Light Acting.

The Hunger Games

We salute your courage and your sacrifice in watching this.

Year: 2012
Director: Gary Ross
Overall Rating: 3.5 stars
Rewatchability: I've seen it more than twice.
Netflix Link: The Hunger Games

 What do you get when you take an average tweenie series and give it to an average writer/director?  That's right, The Hunger Games!




I hear there is a ton of back-story on this one, but you wouldn't know it from the movie.  Two cards of text are really all you need.  "The peasants Rebelled" and "So now we kill 23 of your kids every year!"  Oh right, I forgot one...  "And we'll call this killing 'The Hunger Games' for some reason."



The pacing of the story really sucks as well.  Everything just shuffles along for the first 15 minutes when finally, *BANG!* 30 seconds of almost action!  Now we're on a train shuffling along for more 'character development' which in this one consists of a ton of meaningless crap that won't have anything to do with what's actually going to happen.  (If a symbol is going to be so important you have to put it on the cover, why not give us a tiny clue what makes it so damn important?)

Great little action flick you've got here.  43 minutes and no hint of action in sight.  This would be the perfect time for an 80s-style montage.  Queue the power-ballad and we'll be ready for action in under 5 minutes.  But no...  This is going to drag on for at least another 20...




Let's move on to the cast.  Isn't casting Woody Harrelson as a burn-out drunk kind of redundant?  I spent the first half of the movie trying to figure out why the acting was so bad. It finally hit me that he's not acting.  It's just like any other day listening to Woody talk to himself.  It's not all bad though.  At least Jennifer Lawrence's acting isn't quite as 'dead' as Kristen Stewart's.