6 out of 10

Rating: 6/10 (24 March 2012)

I've not read the books, so I don't know what all the fuss is about. The Hunger Games is okay, but without the violence, it's a "young adults" story. The point of that is I don't know why everyone thinks it's so great. It's certainly not worth 8.2/10.
EDIT: There's nothing wrong with young adult fiction, I'll add. It's just that it's a bit afternoon TV-ish for such a violent premise, and lacking real narrative bite.
Summary: Dystopian society where kids get selected to participate in a televised wilderness-arena fight to the death.
The story is okay, if a bit clichéd these days. The script is alright, but it's a bit light. During the actual tournament, it's not particularly tense. There's very little feeling of desperation, which one would think would be a prerequisite for a fight-to-the-death kill-fest. That's a failing of both the script and the director.
What really, REALLY annoyed me was the horrible camera work at the start. It's hideously shaky and painful to watch. Either I got used to it, or they realised what a dumb idea it was and stopped, but for the first 10-15 minutes it sucked. Cinematographers who think that shaky, hand-held camera work looks good should be slapped upside the head. It detracts from the story (which is the whole point of the film).
EDIT: The point isn't that shaky camera work necessarily looks bad. The problem is that the camera work is shaky whilst zipping around, which makes it hard to watch. Other films use this effect as well, but they tend to be shaky whilst focusing on only one image, which allows the eye to compensate.
It actually felt a lot like "Tomorrow when the war began" for some reason. It's violent (although you don't see much gore), and devoid of any real thematic point. The author claims to have come up with the idea while "channel-surfing the TV where she saw people competing for some prize and then saw footage of the Iraq war. She describes how the two combined in an unsettling way". Unfortunately, all that the author has done is create a story where we watch brutality for enjoyment. Maybe the rest of the series will discover some form of theme that contradicts this idea, but at the moment its a continuation of what it thinks it's parodying.
Despite all that, it's a breezy flick. Okay, not great. Not well written, but passable. Not holding my breath for the next two installments. 6 out of 10.