A Good Adaptation

Rating: 9/10 (26 March 2012)

For those of you who don't know the basic story line: There are 12 districts controlled by the Capitol. Every year a boy and girl, aged 12-18, are chosen from each district to fight to the death for all to watch.
There lies the biggest problem with this adaptation. It is about the brutal slaughter of nearly two dozen teens by each other, and yet the movie has been watered down to be PG-13 appropriate, most likely to expand the potential audience. Unfortunately, this means that the true brutality of the games is somewhat overlooked.
For people who have read the novel(s), there of course are changes made. Having read the books when they first came out, I only noticed a few changes. Fortunately, these new ideas don't impact the overall story line that much, making for a good book to movie adaptation. However, the changes made do ignore some of the more subtle ideas of the book. This is especially true for explaining the relationship between Katniss and Gale, which is a minimal part in the movie because it occurs mostly in the opening of the book.
Overall, the movie was well done. The camera work was often shaky (on purpose to create drama), which worked in some scenes but became tedious in others, especially when it was simply used to cover up deaths. The actors worked better than I had originally thought they would. Josh Hutcherson is a little too boyish in my opinion to play Peeta, especially since all of his work has been in children's movies, but he did pull off the role. Fortunately, there were no actors who simply could not act or just did not have the ability to fill the role.
I went into this movie slightly terrified that they would ruin one of my favourite novels and was very pleasantly surprised when I left to find myself happy with the adaptation and with plans to buy the movie when it comes out on DVD. I definitely suggest seeing the movie, and reading the books of course.
I rate this a 9/10.