Moroni's Review of "The Hunger Games"

When I walked into the theater to see "The Hunger Games", I admit - I knew nothing about it. Except that there was a lot of hype about it. Which is unfortunate for this review, because hype creates expectation.

I am no foreigner to hype. Nor am I a stranger - as a 42 year-old man - to teen fiction. I read the entire Harry Potter series - twice. And I enjoyed them. I also looked forward to the movies.

Ah, I suppose that the inevitable Harry Potter comparison is inevitable. And that's too bad, because they are totally different.

I went with my teen daughter who - true to the post-modern nature of her dad - had read these books before the hype started. Maybe it's because I hadn't read the books. But I just couldn't see what the big deal was.

I found the story - and visual design of the film - to be bleak and dark. This is not a feel-good movie, portraying a despotic government that selects teens from every district to participate in a gladiator-style competition to the death. (I wonder if our society is not too far from this?)

The best part of the movie were the actors' performances. Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen is a great newcomer. She captures the duality of Katniss's fear and determination with flawless ease. The other teen actors were not as good (except the actress who plays the ill-fated Rue). It was nice to see Wes Bentley in a movie. After "American Beauty", I expected promising things from him, and he sort of disappeared from the silver screen. Stanley Tucci, as always, was brilliant. Those were some huge dentures that he was wearing. It was nice to see Lenny Kravitz once again make the transition from music back to acting. Donald Sutherland's performance was bland. Anything with Woody Harrelson is going to be worth watching.

But Elizabeth Banks stole the show as Effie Trinket. Not only was she unrecognizable in her bizarre makeup, but her forced magnanimity as she participates in the wholesale kidnapping of children was disturbing.

Maybe part of my problem with this movie is that I am forgetting that it is a trilogy. I wanted to see justice by the end of the first movie, but that is probably being held in reserve for the third (and last) movie. But this was a very dark first chapter.

In brief - I liked the movie. But it did not live up to the hype. See it, and judge for yourself. It is Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" meets "The Truman Show".

I would suggest this movie only for older kids since it portrays children being forced to commit unspeakable acts of murder against each other.