Plodding adaptation of a great bestseller

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2012)

Suzanne Collins' novel was a deserved bestseller because it was fast-paced and intelligent with a strong heroine at its core. Which is why it is so disappointing that the most accurate description of the film version is plodding.
Set in a repressive future, where twelve progressively poorer districts pay penance to a rich capital city by way of a lottery that forces a male and female teenage recruit from each district to participate in The Hunger Games, a yearly televised gladiator style competition played until only one survivor is left standing. When her innocent and vulnerable 12-year-old sister is selected against all odds, the resourceful Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her place, and along with the male offering, Peeta, is whisked away to be trained for the deadly games.
The film is largely faithful to the novel, but feels compelled to tone certain aspects down to its detriment and add things that are unnecessary. Director Gary Ross provides by-the-numbers direction that is far more dull than inspired. His visions of this world are disappointing. The dirt poor District 12 looks like a set for denizens of Deliverance, except that Katniss, her sister and her friend Gale are entirely too well scrubbed for such a place. By contrast, the capital city and its citizens seem like they were snatched from one of the cheesier episodes of 1960s Star Trek.
The set up of the lottery, the trip to the city and the training seems to go on forever. Ross and company provide some very badly done flashbacks to fill in gaps in the narrative. For instance, Katniss is conflicted that Peeta has been chosen since he risked the wrath of his tyrant mother and showed her a kindness when her family was starving. The book told us in a couple of paragraphs. The film requires no less than three flashbacks so vague that those unfamiliar may think Peeta is being mean to her in them by throwing food to pigs.
Once the action moves to the Games, it doesn't get any better. The use of music (which can enhance suspense) is severely limited and Ross films the action with one of those jitter-cams, which often makes it near impossible to fathom what is going on. Worse, any time we start to become involved in the action in the forest, Ross and company segue to an added sequence featuring Donald Sutherland's icy president or Wes Bentley's calculating gamesmaster (a character not in the novel) or some other lackluster diversion.
The casting which sounds great on paper, turns out to be a mixed bag. Sutherland dusts off his glare as the predominant villain. Bentley is fine, but his role is excess baggage. Woody Harrelson is a great choice to play a former winner who functions as an adviser/agent to the the two main characters, but the script has reigned in or eliminated some of his best moments. Elizabeth Banks is little more than a buffoon as the ludicrous Effie Trinkett, while Lenny Kravitz manages to be sympathetic as a kind stylist.
In the core role, Jennifer Lawrence seemed to be a real coup for Katniss. Unfortunately, she comes off like a more mundane Helen Hunt. Katniss should be appealing and dynamic. On paper, she popped. On film, not so much. Part of the problem is that Katniss is conflicted about a number of things and Lawrence has confused conflicted with ambivalence. Instead of filling the gaps destined to happen in a film transfer, Lawrence keeps both the other characters and the viewer at arm's length. We believe she is tough and resourceful and can do miracles with a bow, but she is so aloof for the most part that we don't care. Instead of insight, we get far too many scenes of Lawrence either brooding or weeping as a substitute. When she develops a rapport with a young competitor, Lawrence fails to make us understand why or feel that it is anything other than a plot contrivance. We never feel any doubt in the film that she will triumph, so the film seems to be marching slowly to a preordained climax. Lawrence also shares no chemistry with co-star Josh Hutcherson, which mutes the later moments between them.
It is arguably a scripting and acting fault that Hutcherson, despite lack of chemistry with Lawrence, actually emerges as more sympathetic and whose character, whose future seems much murkier, elicits more concern. Hutcherson manages to take on a more passive role, and successfully elicit the sympathy that often and puzzlingly eludes the lead. Yet if Lawrence has no chemistry with Hutcherson, she has even less with Liam Hemsworth as Gale. The film takes a character whose appearance in the novel was basically as a bookend and tries to set the ground for some kind of Twilight-lite triangle. Hemsworth is entirely too clean for District 12, generates no heat with the leading lady and has the thankless task of being reduced to either smiling or pouting - the latter of which he does not do well. Too many segues from the action to Hemsworth looking angsty to remind us that he is in the film and supposed to be of some import become annoying quickly.
While not a total disaster by any means, the film truly misses the mark by a farther mile than many would have you believe. The film is neither suspenseful nor does it allow us to really get to know or root for the heroine, a character that jumped off the written page. The additions are ill-conceived and the workmanlike direction proves entirely unsuited for material that requires a surer, more inspired hand. And would someone please tell directors to stop shaking the camera all over the place in some misguided attempt to generate "you are there" excitement...it doesn't work.