A missed opportunity...

Rating: 3/10 (31 March 2012)

I will start off by saying that I did not read the books. I'm also one of those people that when I first saw the trailer, I thought it was a Battle Royale remake. When I found out it wasn't, I was quite surprised, cause they seemed very similar. You cant always judge a film by it's trailer though. So to be fair, I decided to give this movie a chance, and not go into it comparing the two.
The movie has quite a slow start, and even though they take a long time building up; I didn't get the idea that I was getting to know any of the characters. They really didn't do a good job making any of the characters likable, or let them develop in any way. The main character in this film, Katniss, was already portrayed as a tough girl from the very beginning of the film. Nothing in the first part of the movie did anything to either develop this, or add to it.
When the games finally start, I was kind of excited, because I was looking forward to some action finally. Unfortunately for me; the action was lacking quite a bit. Shaky camera-work, which I guess is meant to be artistic these days, left a lot of the killing to your imagination. Due to lack of character building in the beginning of the film, I didn't really mind who died, cause I didn't feel any connection with any of the characters. On top of that; many scenes from the actual games seem to be lacking dept, reason or logic. It was as if they went for too many scenes in too little time. This resulted into the whole story of the movie being kind of blur to me, and left me wondering if there was even one there.
On a positive note; the acting was quite OK. Jennifer Lawrence portrayed her role quite well, and her acting had nothing to do with me not being able to relate to her character. Elizabeth Banks was splendid, as a character that at first sight seems totally misplaced in this world, but totally works in the way it's portrayed.
All in all, I'll have to be fair and say I don't quite get the hype. The movie seemed to be lacking in too many areas, in order for me to stay interested throughout the entire two and a half hours. Not comparing this film to Battle Royale while watching it was made quite easy, simply because this wasn't close to being as good. A missed opportunity for an interesting theme like this!