The Excessive Closeup Games

Rating: 4/10 (24 March 2012)

I was excited to see this film based on all the hype from my friends. I haven't read the books, but thought the story was interesting based on the one-line explanations I got from others.
I went into this film expecting to see something similar to the Twilight films (teen obsession over book turned film), but better.
What I got was much, much worse.
First off, I want to say that I thought the acting was great. The actors did a great job of portraying their characters.
What WASN'T so great was the lack of character development. The death scenes, even those meant to be emotional, didn't affect me at all. I am one who isn't afraid to cry like a baby at a movie, and I often do. But while the others around me were sobbing, I was just ready for the scene to be over with.
Another reason I strongly disliked this film, has to do with my title. It seems like 95% of the shots in this movie were closeup on the characters faces. These are fine, to an extent, but you begin to wonder after a while if the actors aren't all just bodiless floating heads. The fight scenes were quickly cut together, which could work, if you weren't zoomed in so much that you have no idea what was going on.
For a film with a supposed 100,000,000 dollar budget, this came across as a low-budget independent adaption of the book. They could have done so much more to improve the visual aspect of the film as well as make the characters more likable.
Overall, I would give this film 4 stars, mainly due to the great acting and costume design. Everything else, was horrible.