There was so much buzz at school (and on Fox News all week) about the latest popular-tween-book-series-gone-big-screen pilot The Hunger Games that I had to check it out this weekend. Here’s the trailer:
I knew very little about the world of The Hunger Games going into this film so I had few expectations except 1) that my students loved the book, saying it read like a video game, and 2) watching Fox News trying to tell parents that the movie should be rated R not PG-13. I was a hard PG-13, which easily could have gone R if they showed a bit more blood or delved into a few more adult themes. Perhaps the book does. PG-13 is a notorious money maker, whereas R is not.
The controversy: kids hunting down and killing other kids for entertainment, all orchestrated as punishment for some past wrong committed by the various districts in some futuristic dystopian North America. It hits anti-government, anti-media populist themes, which is never all that bad.
What I enjoyed about the film was that it took the time to get into character development, while keeping the plot moving so one is never bored. Hearing that this is the first book in a trilogy made me feel like an impending sequel was coming, but this film stands alone very well without forcing the sequel issue. Apparently it’s already made enough money to warrant one.
Ultimately, The Hunger Games was 2:20 of decent entertainment: part Gladiator, part Lord of the Flies, with a touch of The Fifth Element in the bizarre metropolis clothing styles. I give it a B/B+ in that it was good, well-developed, but not something new or innovative enough to highly recommend it. If you have the time, it’s not bad.
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Finished the book this morning and now I want to see the film.