Still hungry

Rating: 5/10 (9 November 2013)

I was corralled into watching this movie by my visiting 11 year-old niece, who'd already seen it twice before and of course couldn't help herself giving me prior notice of key moments usually just a few minutes before they occurred on screen. That said, she also helped explain some of the vagaries of the plot and characterisations as the movie progressed, making it a quid-pro-quo so far as I was concerned.
What I got from my viewing was a sort of near-future version of "Lord Of The Flies" crossed with "Big Brother" (referencing both the TV reality show and of course Orwell's novel). It is a bit slow to get going, as the characters are introduced to the viewer, then stays in low gear once the young sacrificial lambs are selected for training before some excitement is generated in the "last man standing" last hour battle-royal between the combatants. Actually this section reminded me of nothing so much as a classic episode of the original "Star Trek" where Captain Kirk is marooned on a strange planet to fight a one-to-one battle with an alien opponent.
To be honest, there was a bit more action and drama in James T's adventure than the youngsters' here. Each time a major crisis was averted, a new one would manifest itself, computer-game style, usually created by the games-masters conjuring up new perils at will for the young hero and heroine to fight. The young actors playing the main parts to me didn't seem especially memorable although in a screenplay where they mostly get to run and fall down a lot, perhaps I'm doing them a disservice. There's not really much depth in the portrayals from the older actors too, Woody Harrellson getting to play "larger-than-life" as the youngsters' grumpy, soused mentor although of course he's won over to their side quickly and easily enough, while Stanley Tucci gets to ham it up almost as outrageously as he did in "The Devil Wears Prada" as a TV show interviewer.
I guess it was hard for this movie to fail commercially given the literary following amongst teenagers the source novel has attracted in a similar way to the Harry Potter films. I personally prefer films of this type to be more fantasy and less ferocious, (some of the on-screen violence must have been border-line excessive with the censors) and about 40 or so minutes could easily have been edited down to make a tighter, more coherent and satisfying movie, but I've certainly seen many worse "teenagers" -type movies, although unless young Erin is really stuck for company, I'll not be queueing up to see the sequel any time soon.