I'm shocked that it's maintained an 86% on RT. First of all, I think Jennifer Lawrence and Journey to the Center of the Earth boy were fine. The acting wasn't much of an issue, even though Christopher Plummer and Woody Harrelson were sleepwalking through the entire movie.
The movie's issue is that the source material is very flimsy and thin - and, yes, I've read the book. I am personally upset with those of you that would consider this a good work of fiction. We all have different tastes, sure, but K.A. Applegate might as well have written it. The stakes are razor thin. The villains (the Capitol) are arbitrarily and so blatantly evil without anyone within the Capitol (save a fashion designer) blinking. The random genetic wolf/dog shit served no other purpose than to reiterate how darker than dark the villains are. And then the last act - if you can even call it that - was hilariously abrupt.
The biggest fault in the film is that every major narrative element was explained wholesale to the audience. The bread scene didn't need a fifth callout by Peeta himself. Granted, they're apparently selling this to preteens, so maybe that's not the worst tactic to take. But I wasn't exactly expecting Spy Kids when I hopped in the theater.
The cave scene was special levels of dreadful. The cake-making -> world-class special effects artist was also random. I might be recalling this incorrectly, but I thought he just buried himself in mud in the book.
The one thing this movie did was make me despair over the failure of the Golden Compass as a film. I don't like those books either, but the world Pullman created was far, far more interesting than Collins' bizarre Fifth Element/North America world.
On a side note, the movie was full of 10-year-old kids, which made me realize that violence is totally and absolutely acceptable as a social norm, even though tits would have give this movie an R by default. Really strange.
That they took a concept so ripe with potential and did nothing but scratch the surface of it. Where was the social commentary and the exploration of the effects of the Games on the participants and society at large? Secondly, I felt that the movie's emotional beats rung out completely hollow with the exception of Rue. Then of less critical damage are the shakey cam and crappy production values.
Another example of a script sticking too closely to the original materials. The normalcy of violence as a matter of course should have been hit on in the film, but it's not a point made in the first book. Unless you count, "man, this Hunger Games shit is terrible."
Really had a bit of a meta experience realizing that 80% of the crowd was under 15 in a movie about kids murdering each other. And not a single fuck was given.
