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.
No comments:
Post a Comment