Paper thin and watered down

Rating: 5/10 (24 March 2012)

The trouble with this movie is that I'm old enough to have seen many of its antecedents. So before The Truman Show, which is essentially the same idea as The Hunger Games, we have Battle Royale, The Running Man and of course, Rollerball. They all deal with mass entertainment in a dystopian future society and they all have their flaws. What's really disappointing about The Hunger Games is that unless you've read the book, the film will give you only a fleeting glimpse into why the games are called that. There's nothing else to help the naive reader make sense of the plot and because of this, the involvement of children will seem a bit odd to anyone who hasn't read the book. In fact, that's something you should take into account when reading many of the reviews of the film as they're written by people who have read the books and can fill in the wide gaps in the film without even thinking about it. Some have said its plot line is mildy satirical, but in my view that's just an excuse for a poorly filleted and disappointing adaptation of a marvellous book.