Its hard not to compare The Hunger Games to Battle Royale (2000). Its not as if there are movies that exist that don't overlap in theme or basic storyline; but so many aspects of Hunger Games mirrored that of Battle Royale. However, Battle Royale is a Japanese cult classic so its likely you haven't seen it (although I highly recommend it).
In Hunger Games, a group of teenagers (tributes) are pitted against each other in a televised fight to the death battle. The largest difference between Hunger Games and Battle Royale has to be the gore factor. Hunger Games minimizes the blood and hardly shows any real view of children dying. If there is one thing Hunger Games succeeds in doing is earning their PG-13 rating. Although, it is still a movie about children killing each other, so why bother diluting it?
Jennifer Lawrence as the Katniss Everdeen is a perfect match. She is highly relatable as Katniss; even during her contemptuous moments, you're rooting for her the whole way.
Woody Harrelson as Haymitch and Elizabeth Banks as Effie are the two outstanding performances.
There's a slight uproar about the character, Rue, being played by Amandla Stenberg, instead of a white actress, as she is represented in the books. It makes no difference. There's nothing in the movie that requires the character to be any particular ethnicity.
Lenny Kravitz as Cinna is the only person noticeably attempting to act. His persona comes off as lazy rather than cool.
Donald Sutherland as President Snow is surprising. He's usually good at being bad, but he seems like he's sickly or dying, and not nearly as psychotically masterful for being "President" of such an awful system.
Its a rather long film, at 2 hours 36 minutes, and much more boring than it should be. It takes over an hour before the kids enter the domed arena to fight. Prior to entering the arena, the tributes are trained and given a make-over to make for better television. During this time, everything is dragging on and you begin to ask, 'When are they going to start fighting already?' During training, hardly any special skills are shown and during fighting, hardly any special skills used. The tributes are not 'X-Men,' but even Katniss hardly uses her signature weapon in any fantastic way. This does however lend credence to the realism of the tributes and normally that will be appreciated, but the movie is very outlandish. It would've been better served had the tributes shown more skills. In other words, none of the tributes are "BA" (BA means badass for all you non-gamers out there). The tribute closest to "BA" status is Clove. She's a skilled knife thrower. The confusion comes in when a situation calls for her to put her skill to use and she doesn't use it! Glimmer attempts to use a bow, then Cato attempts to use the bow. Why doesn't Clove just throw a knife?
Most of the special effects are decent. Katniss's dress and the control room for the arena are fairly impressive, but parts of the movie contains shockingly low special effects, e.g., when the tributes are introduced to the audience. The finale incorporates good effects but the finale itself is anti-climactic.
The general story is good, the characters are good, the acting is good, and even the directing is passable. The screenplay needs to be burned. The one thing this movie leaves you with is a desire to read the book. It seems as though there might be a wonderful gem behind this flimsy portrayal. If there's one thing to take away from this movie is that the tween fangirls tastes are improving. In other words, thank goodness Twilight is over!
On a scale of 1-10 The Hunger Games is...a 6.5
with distinction: slightly overrated.
Scene Spotlight: None.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
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