The horrible Hunger Games

Rating: 2/10 (10 April 2012)

Monday 10th of April 2012, the Hollywood industry stole US$9.5 from me. I was lured into watching the movie that most recently reached the position of 3rd most grossing movie of all times (what ever that means), "The Hunger Games", and came out of it with such anger that I decided to write this review in spite of knowing that I was already too late for it to make any difference; the monster had already gained the hearts of so many who probably don't know any better.
I'll start by acknowledging the fact that it is not an original screenplay; it is based on Suzzanne Collins' novels, and will even admit that I haven't read them; however, no one should use that a shield to hide behind; either the adaptation by Gary Ross was extremely poor or the working material was to begging with and should have been rewritten for the better.
Originality: 0
The overall story of this first part (cant believe 2 more are to follow) isn't original at all; it basically takes the "survival entertainment" theme already covered by many, such as Paul Michael Glaser's 1987 "The Running Man" with Arnold Schwarzenegger (Based on Stephen King's novel), or Kinji Fukasaku's 2000 "Battle Royale" (Based on Koushun Takami's novel, which is exactly the story of The terrible Hunger Games).
Creation of the world: 0
A futuristic world composed of 12 Districts, and all Gary Ross/Suzzanne Collins can come up with to make it look futuristic are: a magnetic train (I invented that when I was 12), some colorful hairdos (thank you the 80s') and oh, no, nothing else, sorry.
It's the Future!!! Cant you come up with something else than Bows & Arrows for weapons?!
Characters Development: 0.25
Katniss Everdeen, the lead character, is well portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence in spite of the poor dialog (discussed further down); but she might as well have been playing in "Cast Away" because every other character is either useless (ie. Wes Bentley's Seneca Crane), empty (ie. Josh Hutcherson's Peeta Mellark) or plainly ridiculous (ie. Elizabeth Banks' Effie Trinket). And I wont bother going into the other useless characters portrayed by what are meant to be amazing actors (what happened to you guys?!)
Forgive me, there is Woody Harrelson, who's character, Haymitch Abernathy, is mildly interesting when he first appears on screen (more details below); but it only takes about 3 minutes before he becomes the empty good Samaritan.
Even the "supposed to be" evil kids are useless; and I mean that literally because you see them more in training than you do on the actual battle field; although you do see them hoping and laughing after having killed someone, behind the bushes; which makes them look totally bad ass.
Action: 0
As I mentioned above, it is meant to be a life or death situation kind of movie with a bunch of kids having access to a number of weapons where only 1 can survive, and all you see is the main character sleeping in trees a bunch of times, sleeping in the water, sleeping in a cave; and oh god I'm sleepy now.
Pretty much every killing happens off screen (or behind a bush). You want to make a PG13 movie Mr. Gary Ross? Don't make it about kids meant to murder each other with medieval weapons until only one is standing!
When you first see Woody Harelson's character, Haymitch Abernathy, he is meant to be one of the Hunger Games survivor who's horrific experience in the game made him an alcoholic; alright, right on, the first half of the movie was boring (and actually kind of made me sick because the camera keeps moving around and the frames change every 1.5 seconds) but this has now become something to look forward to; but noooooooooo, you see the survivors (yes there's more than one because rules don't apply in this society and nobody cares) at the end as if they had been pranked with a bit of salt in their lemonade and didn't get the joke; what a horrible experience that was, for me.
Nothing ever really happens in this movie! And in between moments of nothing, a ridicule little parachute comes in with some magical healing cream; god forbid our little heroes ever got scratched.
I am being unfair: the Hunger Games Gods overseeing the entire operation do come up with a great finally: as if kids with medieval weapons weren't enough, they digitally insert not 1 but 5 Pitt-Bears (some kind of Pitt-bull mixed with a Bear) in the game (because that's what you do when you run out of ideas). Remember that terrible scene with the giant puddles in the first Hulk movie? Same, Same, but different. 'and to make it more exciting, let's just suddenly turn the day into night for that 5 minutes scene; why? Because we can'. Shoot me!
Dialogs: 0
What to say? Apparently nothing! Except at the end when the 2 characters are told that 1 of them actually has to die and with no second thought, no survival instinct, no emotion what so ever, one of them just says: "go ahead, kill me".
A beautiful moment in the 5th Art's History; thank you Gary Ross; really.