I’ll say right away that I have not read Suzanne Collins “Hunger Games” trilogy, so I came to the “Hunger Games” movie with no preconceived notions. The first thing I did to prepare for the viewing was to look up the word dystopia, an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one, since every media outlet used it at least once in describing the creepy premise of children murdering other children for entertainment. Now, while the post apocalyptic Panem is certainly dystopian, and I thought “Hunger Games” was a serviceable bit of film-making by director Gary Ross, and I admire the monster box office the movie has generated in its first weekend, I found the film a pretty blah experience. I’m a huge Jennifer Lawrence fan and after seeing her Oscar nominated work in the indie “Winter’s Bone” her casting as Katniss Everdeen was inspired, but her range is limited by the one note, child in peril, survival tale. Like I said it’s all perfectly serviceable but I’ll be surprised if it gets any Oscar love next year.
Rated PG13 (“Bully” gets an ‘R’, really?)
My GPA: 3.0
Recent Comments