Don't take your children

Rating: 7/10 (30 March 2012)

This is not the sort of experience I want in a Friday night let's-wind- down-at-the-end-of-the-week movie. When I read the storyline, I thought "That's sick" but then I watched the lovely young actors in the trailer and thought this could be fun. It wasn't. It was grim, dark and unredemptive, a kind of Orwell meets The Truman Show. So much in the movie was sickening and offensive â€“ and disturbingly ironical. I was disgusted to see the hordes of gaudily painted adults crammed into the theatre waiting to be entertained by the killing of children, and realized uncomfortably part way through that this was exactly what I was doing. The juxtaposition of decadent opulence with abject poverty was obscene, yet it was nothing more than a true reflection of the extremes in our own real world. So please don't take your children if you're out for entertainment. The incidents of violence, though unpleasant, are nothing compared to two and a half hours of unrelenting dread and despair. You might on the other hand for a thoughtful discussion about the influence of media, reality TV and world economics, though if your family's anything like mine, their response is more likely to be "Get over it Mum, it's just a movie". There's no denying that this movie was a taster, an unfinished introduction to the series based on the books. Like it or not, I'm hooked - I can't wait to read them.