Starved of intelligence--and a steadicam

Rating: 1/10 (28 April 2012)

Sort of a witless, teenybopper version of The Running Man, Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1987 black comedy of game shows gone amok, The Hunger Games is a hash of random thought and truly the worst professional cinematography in a major motion picture I've seen in 50 years of film-going. (It often appears that the camera operator is going through an epileptic fit during a tornado. And that's when people are eating lunch. In a fight scene it feels like an espresso OD might be happening as well.) There are enough plot holes, lapses in logic and dopey coincidences in this film that it would take a volume longer than the entire trilogy to detail them. But let's start--and end, with this one: This is the 75th televised Hunger Game. Entire districts turn out every year to watch their hometown champions. Why then are ANY of the participants unprepared for ANYTHING that happens? That being said, Jennifer Lawrence is the only reason to see this film, and you could do yourself a huge favor by renting Winter's Bone instead. It's shorter by about 90 minutes and Lawrence plays a similar, if tougher, smarter character in that one. The rest of The Hunger Game's cast is either a) brutally, bizarrely over-dressed and over-coiffed or b) faceless and dull. This is a bad, bad movie. And you know what? I'm saying this and I saw the movie for free one Saturday afternoon. Imagine how angry I'd be if I had paid to attend?