Weekend Muvie Revue

The Hunger Games

Spring is to movies what all of the 90’s were to music – absolutely terrible.  But they’re both almost over so cheer up.  The first legitimate movie event of the year opened last weekend and scored huge – it recorded the biggest opening day for a non-sequel of all time.  Based on a book that’s been called ‘the greatest thing since Ender’s Game’ by its many fans and ‘Please leave me alone now’ by all their friends and with a plot that’s an equal mixture of Running Man and Lord of the Flies it was pretty much guaranteed to be a hit.

But should you watch it?  If you’re a fan of the book, the answer is no.  The answer should always be no.  You already know the story, you already know the characters.  Plus, you love the book so it’s not like it needs improvement.  In Michael Cain’s book, Acting In Film, he talks about how a lot of acting involves keeping your face blank so people can project whatever they want onto it.  Books are sort of like that.  The author describes a tree and if he does his job right you use those details and fill in the rest with whatever kind of tree you think fits best.  When you read a book and then watch someone else’s visual interpretation of it it’s going to look wrong because what the fuck, they’re not supposed to be cedar trees.  It’s the difference between trying to swap babies at birth and later on as teenagers.

If you’re not a fan of the books the question is a little more complex.  You need to be aware that The Hunger Games is trying to be two movies at once.  A movie for the fans and a movie for you.  They can’t stray or change much from the books or the fans will go apeshit but they still need to pare away extra plot elements and change things around to fit the format.  Normally this isn’t that difficult but with books this popular you’re handicapped.  An author can spend seven pages describing a look between characters and what it means to both of them and what they’re thinking and feeling.  That’s two seconds of a movie and even if the actors squint really hard it’s still just a glance.  There’s only so much filling in you can do.  Normally you can just add extra scenes or change the story to add that context but to the book fans you’re fucking with a story they don’t want fucked with and you already screwed things up enough with those trees.

So whether or not you should see this movie depends on how much you want to be a part of the event.  The next big movie probably won’t be until June and this is the first movie of the year anyone’s given enough of a shit to go out and watch in numbers.  There’s plenty wrong with this movie.  Aside from the adaptation problems it’s never a good thing when you didn’t realize the that scene you were just watching was the climax until it’s already over or a plot twist occurs that surprises you only because you’d already discounted it as being too stupid for them to possibly try it.  But it’s still proficiently directed and the themes and imagery are strong enough to pull you through.  It basically boils down to whether you’d rather be the guy at the wedding wondering why no one has the guts to say this is a terrible idea or the guy outside the wedding really wishing he could get at that cake.

 Verdict

**1/2(out of ****)

 

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