The Hunger Games

“Well, there’s no turning back now,” my wife, Ellen, joked as I pushed play.

Going in to “The Hunger Games” I admittedly never cared much about the books and care even less about the movie. I get the general idea of the story. Something like, the world recovers from an apocalypse and society decides that they should make teenagers fight to the death to keep their society going. Blah blah blah.

I was surprised by the cast. I knew that the young Mystique and Thor’s little brother were in it. Not Loki… the brother from the more realistic side of his family. But I was delighted to see Woody Harrelson and Donald Sutherland.

“The Hunger Games” is an adapted-from-children’s-literature movie a la “Harry Potter”, “Twilight”, and “Percy Jackson” not that I’ve ever seen “Percy Jackson”, but we all get the general idea. Tweens and Teens are getting too old for cartoons and want to see some real action. But they haven’t had the life experience to handle actually seeing action.  We also don’t really get to know anyone who dies. In fact the only person we’re allowed to like who dies is Rue, played by Amandla Stenberg. She isn’t given enough screen time for us to grow all that attached though.

Here’s The Thing About This Movie…

I didn’t hate “The Hunger Games”. There’s no reason to hate it. With that said, there’s really no reason to like it. The main character, Katniss, played by Jennifer Lawrence, never got awesome. The death of friends and the threat of her own life mostly just made her run and hide better. She uses her bow and arrow about 4 times and only shoots two people. I'm not hoping for a blood bath of a movie, this is obviously not that, but I would like a heroine who is strong rather than one who is only trying to survive. Woody Harrelson was great at being Woody Harrelson. Donald Sutherland didn’t really talk. The rest of the cast gave rather forgettable performances. Not bad, but nothing I’ll even remember tomorrow. It was exactly what I expected, one part “Goblet of Fire”, three parts “New Moon”-esque love triangle.

At the end of the day, this is a movie that will be loved by kids, forgotten by most adults, and especially loved by Lionsgate for all the money they will make off of the next three movies.