A Review of The Hunger Games

I'll keep this short so as not to 1) nit-pick because the book was about.. 873243x better than the movie (as expected for most in the book-turned-film category) and 2) spoil the plot if you haven't read the books or seen the movie yet.

Note: I was already a little biased before seeing the movie since I didn't completely agree with the casting choices.

I tried my best to watch the movie as though I hadn't read the books yet, but who was I kidding? It's impossible not to let that influence how you view the movie.

The movie lacked any sort of depth and was very unclear at points. When you go from first person point of view, you should incorporate other methods of explaining things in the movie. I was wondering how they would achieve this in 142 minutes without compromising some of the major plot points.. but compromise they did! I expected there to be more flashbacks and dialogue to make up for the absence of our heroine's thoughts but, there were less than few. The movie could have benefited from more dialogue, literally even a few additional lines would have made a world of difference in explaining certain things and given the characters some dimension. (I really felt nothing for most of the characters in the movie.)

Someone in our group had not read the book prior to seeing the movie and had to ask a few questions throughout the film about why and what was happening. She enjoyed the movie and chalked it up to being sold as an "action" flick, for which it delivered.

One of the main focuses of the first half of the book went completely unaddressed, likely because it was all in Katniss' mind, and left me feeling empty since it helped readers understand and grow more attached to the heroine. Without this, Katniss just seemed like an empty shell.

I was mostly bummed that the hacker jacker scene was not as intense or colorful as expected! She just looked drugged and the entire scene reminded me of the scene in "Doom" (starring Wayne "The Rock" Johnson) where Reaper is injected with a mutation inducting drug. (If you've seen the movie, you know exactly which scene I'm talking about!)

One positive: the way they kill off one character in the movie, that isn't mentioned in the book, was brilliant.

You can't expect much for a film adaptation of a book and though I was a little lukewarm about this first movie, I will probably see the next three in theater anyway since, after all, it IS an action movie.

My advice: If you see this movie, don't read the book first but make sure you go with someone who has so they can fill in the blanks for you!