Not worthy of the books

Rating: 4/10 (27 August 2012)

This movie is a pale shadow of the book. In fairness, because Katniss Everdeen is the first-person narrator of the series, there is a lot of psychological depth to the character and her experience that is extremely difficult to translate into a visual medium without accompanying the action with narrative voice-over or a similar device. That said, the liberties taken with the novel are pretty significant.
The movie follows the general framework of the story, but is incredibly frustrating in its lack of depth. A peripheral character from the novel becomes central to the movie, while the writers eliminate more important secondary characters whose emotional impact within the book is much greater. As the movie progresses, it takes a slash-and-burn approach to the novel's narrative, discarding sub-plot after sub-plot until much of what made the world of the novels so harrowing evaporates. In fact, the whole thing felt so rushed and poorly composed that I found myself wondering if it was filmed over a weekend. While I eventually warmed up a bit to Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson as Katniss and Peeta, neither really won me. Choosing Stanley Tucci for Caesar Flickerman was entertaining, and casting Lenny Kravitz as Cinna was a nice touch. Woody Harrelson worked better as Haymitch than I expected, but the movie made alterations to the emotional dynamic between him and Katniss and Peeta that did nothing to enhance the story. In fact, the movie introduces enough changes that I'm afraid they'll snowball in the sequels until the whole trilogy is essentially rewritten on-screen.
Although the comparison isn't entirely fair, when Peter Jackson & co. had to take liberties in their adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, they did so with a respect for the original material that, in my opinion, preserved the majesty of the trilogy. In contrast, I came away from The Hunger Games wondering if Gary Ross and his writers had so much confidence in the selling power of the book that the quality of the movie seemed inconsequential: it was going to make a mint no matter what they did. (Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Suzanne Collins herself received screenplay credits.)
In short, the movie doesn't do the complexity of the books justice. The psychological and physical horror of the Games is largely absent, many of the subplots that give the novel so much emotional substance are gone, and the failure to stick to even some fairly basic details - like the Cornucopia being gold rather than an olive drab bunker - makes the whole thing feel hasty and ill-conceived.
I didn't expect the movie to live up to the book, but I also didn't expect it to fall so far short.