A disappointing adaptation of a popular teenage book. And the new Twilight, unfortunately...

Rating: 5/10 (14 April 2013)

Fasten your seat belts- just as you thought Twilight was coming to an end, here's another soppy teenage love story to replace it. Granted, this one is surrounded with kids murdering each other left right and centre, a crippled civilisation run by a scheming dictator, and more interesting characters (except Peeta) than we saw in the Twilight franchise, but even so it feels like the producers wanted this to appeal to the same audience that enjoyed Stephanie Meyer's novels. The thing here is that while the Twilight books were mostly directed at girls and put more emphasis on Bella and Edward's relationship than the whole vampire- werewolf thing, the Hunger Games books actually attracted a lot of young male fans who were interested in the violence and survival elements of it. So what would have been a sensible thing to do would be to share it out- have some romance for the ladies and some gore and scary moments for the testosterone-filled men, but the balance between the two in this movie is heavily geared towards the former- a five minute long conversation/make out session between Katniss and Peeta being the prominent example. There is violence, of course, but most of it is either shown off-screen (Thresh's death, among others), shot from a long distance or shot with a shaky camera (this annoyed me throughout the whole film but is most noticeable in the bloodbath at the beginning of the Games), supposedly to keep this at a 12A certificate. In fact, apart from a splatter across Cato's face at the Cornucopia showdown, there is no blood at all in this (the only genuinely creepy moments being Glimmer being stung to death by wasps and Thresh slamming Clove repeatedly against the Cornucopia (in the book he hits her with a rock, which is probably worse). I was really hoping to see the fight between Cato and Thresh, but rather than shooting this they have Thresh be killed unceremoniously off-screen by mutant dogs. I can't really complain about this because although this fight happens in the book, it isn't described in detail, but even so wouldn't this be an opportunity for the production team to take an off-stage fight in the book and use their creativity to bring it to life for the movie? The whole thing just seems lazy and although I tend to like films to stay accurate to books, I felt this one was almost word-for-word, and as such much of it was very predictable. Anyway, enough of the content and on to the acting. Jennifer Lawrence does well as Katniss, a character robbed of much of her personality by the fact that the film differs from the first- person narration seen in the book. Josh Hutcherson (who has impressed me in the past) had the misfortune of being cast as Peeta, one of the dullest characters in literary history, and as such there is little he can do with the script, largely based on the book, to make his character more interesting. His only scene in which he has a chance to give his character some life, the scene with Katniss where he talks about not becoming the government's pawn, feels pretty soulless. The supporting cast I thought were much better- Stanley Tucci is superb as the larger-than- life talk show host Caesar Flickerman, Woody Harrelson is suitably gruff as Haymitch, and Elizabeth Banks is hilarious as the eccentric Effie Trinket. Some of the other tributes are also quite good- Isabelle Fuhrman is scary as Clove, Alexander Ludwig is good as Cato and delivers his speech at the end, revealing the way he has been raised from birth to compete in the Games and bring pride to his district, with ample emotion. Amandla Stenberg is an innocent Rue, but due to the fact that she barely appears on-screen up to her death means that the scenes of Katniss' grieving and the rebellion in District 11 don't make you feel as sad as the emphasis the makers placed on these scenes suggest they wanted you to feel. So although this film is for the most part entertaining and true to the book, I thought they could have done so much more, and the five stars I did not give are the potential this did not live up to.