The title of this post is what I tweeted as we left the cinema – nothing like a one word film review! I’ve never read the book, and didn’t really know much about the film, so I went into it all very blind. I just thought I’d jot down some thoughts.

First off, some positives.

It looks awesome, the ‘city’ is amazing, they really have created an believable world, and the CGI is the best I’ve seen, it draws you in. The costumes and make up are brilliant, there’s a whole future / past mash-up thing going on and it just works beautifully.

It has a fantastic ‘look’ to it in the way it’s been filmed, there are a fair few ‘hand-held’ camera shots which aren’t often used on a film of this size. One scene that really made me smile was the ‘hallucination’ one, it was done brilliantly, very trippy and unusual, it had flashes that reminded me of bits in ‘Fight Club’ too (never a bad thing!)

Jennifer Lawrence is superb, in the lead role of ‘Katniss Everdeen’, she also makes a cracking action hero during ‘The Games’. The rest of the cast are very good too, Woody Harrelson and Donald Sutherland were excellent. Lenny Kravitz was great too (I didn’t click it was him until looking on IMDb!), my only complaint was that Josh Hutcherson was a little ‘wooden’ at times.

Then for the ‘not so good’ – the pacing was waaaaaay off, some parts were just so slow, really dragging along, and then other scenes seemed to be cut down, when they needed a little bit longer to play out. It is a long film and there is a lot crammed in, but it just didn’t flow as well as it could. The whole ‘Dead Dad’ and the ‘Peeta’ flashbacks seemed a bit out of place. It didn’t seem to fit at all, I do kind of get what they were setting up, but, it could have been chopped out and made little difference.

The end, oh the end! It just finished with Donald Sutherland snarling and walking away? Surely they could have ended it better? It was just weird.

You could spend hours discussing the political and social-economic theme, and the ‘meaning’ behind it, it’s pointless though. The Hunger Games, is a great looking, but horrifically average film. There are some fantastic set pieces, and some breath-taking moments. Ultimately though, it’s just ‘meh’. I did leave the cinema feeling frustrated because it could have been so much better!

One thought on “Review – Hunger Games = Average (No Spoilers)

  1. Laura Hakes says:

    Just finished reading the book this morning. always like to do that before seeing the film. I really enjoyed it. You mention the ending, but I presume they are going to complete the trilogy in film?

    Going to start the second book today.

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