Obvious cash-in novel adaptation

Rating: 2/10 (17 May 2012)

I was somewhat skeptical when going to see 'The Hunger Games', expecting a novel adaption claiming to be the next Harry Potter, but for older audiences (teenagers like myself).
Set in the Distopian not-too-distant future, The Capitol run by Donald Sutherland and other people with strange dress sense, rules the 12 Districts. Each year, a boy and a girl from each district are picked at random to fight in the Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death spanning days. And in this film, that's really all that matters. Instead of giving this film a heavy political theme, it backs out and presents itself as an action/adventure type film. By all means, that's okay if you want to build a large teenage audience demanding some sort of action, where no thinking is involved, but the action sequences themselves are what this film relies on, and is ultimately let down.
At the start of this film, you'll take a guess that this director loves close-ups, and you'll be right. You better like them, cause the director persists in using them the whole way through the film. As a result the action scenes that this film seems to rely on turn out to be horrible. We are given nearly no vision and it ends up stressful for the eyes.
Taking away the supposed action scenes we are left with minimal character development in the main heroine Katniss, boring dialog and a minimal plot.
What really bothers me is that there are already sequels lined up, ready to gross millions, luring in loyal fan bases for 2 hours of low-par filmmaking. Novel adaptations like The Hunger Games are filmmaking at it's lowest, requiring little to no effort, and shameless sequels, as if the millions this film made isn't enough.
Perhaps the novels are better, at least with books, there can't be a shaky camera with extreme close-ups every second.
Appalling novel adaption. 2/10.