Far better than the book

Rating: 7/10 (23 April 2012)

The Hunger Games is a surprise. For the first time I've watched a movie that is better than the original material. In a era that every channel has a new kind of reality TV program, like those ones that Truman Show (1998) and EdTV (1999) predicted a lot in a brief past, Suzanne Collins' idea sounds, by its own merits, interesting. And although her mix and parallels between reality shows and Roman Empire "panem et circenses" are by far the most interesting idea that came back to pop culture in the last couple years, I didn't like the book for a lot of reasons.
The success of the book trilogy is completely understandable. Until 10 yrs back book series wasn't exactly a product of consumption until The Lord Of The Rings become more popular than it was. Then Harry Potter followed the success of its major source of inspiration, becoming the first young adult series to become a world wide hit. When the series was close to its end people was crazy for a new stuff, searching for a new book series that could replace it. Then Twilight saga was discovered and later, The Hunger Games.
Unlikely Twilight saga, which entire movie series was made for young people that loved it without reasons because it is incredibly bad, this one is for a totally different audience. First of all because there is a real actress there, second because Gary Ross (director and writer) did a good work taking the essence of the book and amplifying it, never hiding from the audience that everything is a TV show, even the cheesy romance. But the good thing about Collins' saga is that it always was more interesting as a material to be used in the future than as literature. All three books of the brief saga are short, with a lack of description and poor narrative that would only satisfy those ones looking for a new subject. So, the best achievements of the screenwriters (including Collins herself) were taking all these flaws and transform them into a movie that does what the book fails: dive you into it.
The 1st person narrative that Collins uses is an extremely old technique for those ones who does not succeeds a lot into other different perspectives, cutting a lot of what could be a great experience if a much more described narration was used instead. And that is what the movie does, it shows you the different and wider perspectives that the book does not.
Gary Roos, who directed that sweet movie called Pleasentville (1998) and the great Seabiscuit (2003) had the same gentle hands here and the supporting actors give to the movie another high level. Elizabeth Banks performed Effie Trinket exactly as she is in the books. Woody Harrelson and Stanley Tucci (and his prosthetic teeth) were far better than the way Collins describe them.
But at the same time that the movie feels better than the book, sometimes it also fails. It cuts some important facts of the book wasting time on Katniss hiding, crying and running or other uninteresting facts that if doesn't bore us, dumbs us. There are so much open space for close shots too, and also plenty of 1st person shots, which sometimes are interesting, connecting the audience to what the character is experiencing, but there is a time that it stops being interesting to become dull. For a movie rated PG 13, I think that more should have been shown like the fighting between other tributes which would have given us the feeling of what a true hunger game is. Instead, the tributes are shown as a bunch of teenagers in high school bullying each others.
Its success is fair because it's not bad when compared to other low quality movies made for this age group. It has bad moments, but as a whole it deserves attention and Jennifer Lawrence deserves this success.