It wasn't enough..

Rating: 3/10 (30 April 2013)

**This review contains SPOILERS**
When my sister told me about a book called The Hunger Games I just knew I had to read it. I bought it on my Kindle about three weeks before the movie was supposed to come out. I read it in an afternoon and fell in love. I liked it so much I bought the second and third books in the trilogy and read them right away. Suddenly, I was super excited for the movie to come out. I waited for the Blu-Ray release, because I rarely go to see movies in theaters anymore. I have to say, I was extremely disappointed...
It's not the shaky camera work, or the fact that they cast Josh Hutcherson as Peeta that let me down. I looked past all of that. It's the character development, or should I say LACK of character (and story) development. What the hell were they thinking? This is The Hunger Games and not one time did I believe that most of the citizens of the outlying Districts are supposed to be starving. The connection between Katniss and Peeta in the book is hardly touched on in the movie. The little snippet of Peeta tossing Katniss a burnt loaf of bread is just a joke. That piece of history between the two of them deserved a more in depth explanation than that! I love Effie, Elizabeth Banks did a wonderful job, as well as Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, but poor Cinna! Lenny Kravitz was a good choice to portray him, but he didn't really get an opportunity to shine like Cinna does in the book. He becomes important to Katniss, but you wouldn't know that if you just watched the movie. And don't even get me started on Rue. There was next to nothing as far as development between her and Katniss, which makes the scene of Rue's death seem sort of ridiculous to anyone who hasn't read the book. There was no discussion between them about the differences of their Districts, and we never see Rue's token. It's all just blah to me, which is disappointing.
Madge is left out completely. Buttercup is black and white. We never see Prim's goat, Lady. There are no night vision glasses. Haymitch sends notes with the parachutes. Katniss doesn't lose her hearing. There's no sleep syrup to knock out Peeta so Katniss can retrieve the medicine he needs to survive. I never felt that he was truly dying. The wolf mutts don't have the eyes of the dead tributes, or the collars with their district numbers. Katniss and Peeta don't actually put the Nightlock in their mouths. We don't see her freaking out over Peeta's surgery to give him an artificial leg, which he never gets. The blood and gore has been drastically cut down so they could fit this movie into a PG-13 rating. I don't understand how it could be that difficult to keep things the way they are in the book, at least to the best of the filmmakers ability.. which wasn't done. I understand that it's hard to fit everything in one movie, but at almost 2 and a half hours they could have done much better.
Basically, it was a let down for me. If you've never read the books you may very well enjoy this movie. But, if you have read them then you'll probably be disappointed like so many of us out there. I hope they do better with Catching Fire and Mockingjay, but I won't hold my breath.