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Director: Gary Ross (Seabiscut, Pleasantville)
Staring: Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone), Josh Hutcherson,Woody Harrelson
Year: 2012Genre: Dysotopian Fiction
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Tedious & Brief's Realistic Rating: I'll actually agree with the PG-13 rating this time, though I wouldn't say keep a child who has already read the book from going to the film. I'm going to assume you read the books, but there is a fairly decent amount of violence by young adults on other young adults, including a number of on screen murders. Only maybe a few of them seemed graphic. I will warn that the audience I was with had an audible gasp as one tribute's neck was casually broken on screen.
Running time: 142 minutes
Oh, hey! Look! A review! I hadn't originally planned on going to see the filmed version of Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games on opening weekend, but I did. And, for the most part, I liked it.
A quick recap if you haven't read the books or know much about the plot. In a dysotopian future, North America has become the new nation of Pannem, effectively a capital city in the Rockey Mountains and then 12 client districts (numbered 1 through 12) which each district having a defining characteristic. For example, District 12 is a coal mining district located somewhere in Appalachia.
Each year two children aged 12-18 are picked as tributes from each of the districts to compete in a televised game to the death. When our heroine Katniss Everdeen's 12-year-old sister is chosen as tribute, Katniss volunteers to take her place and enter The Hunger Games instead. Along with her is a male Tribute Peeta who is somewhat acquainted with Katniss. As this is a game to the death, only one of the two could possibly survive and they'll have to go through another 22 children trying to kill them to have any hopes of survival at all.
As for the film, I enjoyed it. Truth be told at almost two-and-a-half hours long, it does run on the longer side and has some slow moments, but those are fairly far an in between. There is a small section at the start of the film explaining some of the basic plot which really felt extemporaneous considering some of the same information is told to the audience a second time maybe ten minutes later in a brief film-within-a-film shown before the choosing of tributes. There are some fairly minor changes from the book, with probably the largest being Pannem's leader, President Snow (played well by Donald Sutherland) shows up a lot more than in the original novel, which is not surprising as he will played a larger role in the second two books of the trilogy.
I thought the acting went well, with the principle cast doing a good job of bringing the characters to life. I was at first skeptical of Woody Harrelson as the drunken Haymitch Abernathy, but the suspicions were unfounded. It's not at all how I imagined the character while reading, but it was Harrelson played it just on the right side of scene stealing. Lenny Kravitz as the costume designer Cinna was another surprise from the supporting cast. The only real problem I had was with the lack of chemistry between Peeta and Katniss. Maybe that was what they were going for, but overall I just didn't get the feeling that they were selling the romance angle.
I really liked how the world of the Capital was brought to life. I always imagined it being Denver or some other large city in the mountain west, but it looked more over the top and like the city of Naboo in The Phantom Menace than any recognizable current city. The fashions of the Capital's citizens were well more outlandish than I imagined reading the books and fit the piece quite well in comparison to the dull, almost Depression-area-like clothing those back in the districts wore.
I would have rather had some more focus on the other tributes, but the film followed the book closely on this not really expanding on their story and a number of them are people who just die and you know barely anything about them. I'm interested to see how the next film in the trilogy, Catching Fire, comes out, but we probably have to wait a year or so, at least, for that.
Final words, if you liked the book, you'll probably like the film. If you haven't read the books yet, I suggest you do so and then see the films. It's worth the price of admission and actually made me want to re-read the books. Until next time, may the odds be ever in your favor.
Rating: 4 of 5.
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3 comments:
O Tedious One,
Thanks for the review. Now I will have to locate a (cheap) copy of the book and read it before I can watch the movie. Your review appears to be spot on with a review I read in the local paper. The newspaper reviewer expressed surprise that the book could produce a 2 1/2 hour movie -- maybe he was also dismayed at the film's length but it sounded more like he was surprised that a short book could engender such a long movie.
You can probably find a cheap copy on Amazon. Too bad Borders closed since they'd often have coupons for 30-45% off a new book.
It's a quick read and I almost immediately went and got the second book to read. I'd say just pop into a local library for it to check it out.
With the film, they didn't cut that much out, hence why it was so long. I don't think that detracted anything from it. It was a fairly faithful filmed version of the book.
I read that Catching Fire is scheduled to release sometime in 2013.
I agree that Woody Harrelson made a great Haymitch, and I thought Jennifer Lawrence really was the perfect actress to play Katniss.
The Captiol crowd turned out to be much more eccentric and twisted than I imagined in the books, and I liked that.
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