The Hunger Games Movie Review

The people who publish my book reviews got me a ticket for me to see The Hunger Games movie at a special screening for critics in Vegas last week, as well as a plane ticket to fly there for the day. I've tacked the review they paid me to write onto the end of my Review of the Book on Goodreads if you feel the great urge to see what I had to say about it.

The short version is that it was better than the book, which isn't really saying much. If you liked the book, you'll probably like the movie, despite the fact that it was VERY low-budget, and in a bad way, not in a creatively good way. At 142 minutes in length it really is far too long, and it felt about twice as long, especially when you consider how much of the movie is flled with Twilight-esque awkward silence between two leading actors that obviously hate each other in real life. Woody Harrelson completely stole the show. If only he'd had a bigger part the movie might not have felt as long as it did. THe film also had 3 credited writers and 8 credited producers. It shows. The movie has obviously been cut to shreds and rehashed multiple timesl.

I don't often say this, but honestly, I could have made a better movie. I can think of about five things off the top of my head that I could have done by simply re-editing the existing filmed footage to make an infinitely more involved movie. And hello, i've had all of TWO filmmaking classes. If someone that can't even be called an amatuer can come up with ideas to improve upon what you've done, you KNOW you're a crap film maker.

I wouldn't recomend it to anyone that wasn't already a fan. If you haven't read the books you won't know who any of the characters are or what is going on half of the time. And if you didn't care for them, the same story in different format, especially done so badly, isn't going to change your opinion on it.