A pretty good adaptation, with one huge exception....

Rating: 6/10 (6 April 2012)

Let me begin by saying I am most definitely not the target audience for this movie. Even so, I read and enjoyed the first book (my wife writes YA fiction, so I try to keep up), and was quite happy to take my two teenage granddaughters, who are the target audience, to see it. While not quite as brilliant an adaptation of book to film as some - the Lord of the Rings trilogy comes immediately to mind - it is still a worthy effort. Worthy in most respects, that is, with one glaring exception, which I will get to in a bit.
First, the good points. The film is a faithful adaptation of the book, with a few minor changes that mostly work. The differences in the two media require different handling. What can be explored at length with the written word must be compressed, implied or, in some cases, made obvious in the visual world of film. The reader's imagination, which is the writer's best friend, becomes the viewer's preconceived notion, which can be the filmmaker's worst enemy. I felt the film did a pretty good job of translation.
In general, the casting and characterizations were good. I have long been a fan of Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson and Stanley Tucci, and they didn't disappoint. Jennifer Lawrence was a pleasant surprise - I was unfamiliar with her work, but the young lady can definitely act, and her portrayal of Katniss was eminently believable. I had a bit of a problem with Josh Hutcherson as Peeta appearance-wise, but setting that aside, overall he acquitted himself well. Elizabeth Banks created an absolute gem of a character with Effie Trinket.
Some have complained that the film sanitized the violence which is such an integral part of the book. I disagree - the violence is there, it is just implied more than explicitly shown. This is a perfectly respectable, although currently little-used technique (consider the murder scene in the original "Psycho", for example) and was necessary for the PG-13 rating the film required for its target audience. Costumes were good, settings were good - some, like the Capital, were superb, and one - the control room - actually improved on the book. Overall, pretty good marks except for that one glaring flaw ....
The camera work was awful! It intruded, it interfered, it irritated, it gave me a headache, dammit! The hand-held jitters and the constant rapid-fire jump cuts were just too much for these tired old eyes to handle, and seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the film. If not for that, I would have scored the film a couple of points higher than I did.