Entertaining and Excellent but Will Be Overjudged

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2012)

The Hunger Games is actually the first movie that I've viewed after reading the book. As such I had mixed feelings going in, and my worry mainly pertained to event accuracy. I understand the nuances of making a movie and had I have donned the Directors cap I would've had to change parts to make it an acceptable movie for all crowds. However, this team executed the movie with a general focus on fact accuracy and the first hand experience.
The acting in this movie is great. The actors all reacted in the manor i envisioned while reading. The production quality is top notch, which was expected for such a high profile movie. The level of accuracy that this movie has in paralleling the book is astounding from an adaptation stand point. It can be very difficult to make an entertaining movie that closely follows the structure of a book, but they were able to.
I'd like to start out by saying that this is a great movie, but being that I read the book, I had some criticisms. The biggest one in the execution of subtleties. This movie tried very hard to define the dystopian world and spent a lot of the movie's "free" time on that. However, the visuals are enough that i felt this time may have been better spent expanding on the other characters in the movie. Emotions also took a back seat. Katniss is portrayed as a very strong emotional character, but a lot of the emotions around the various events felt rushed and lost.
I would easily recommend this movie to everyone. However I don't think it will be as highly rated as it is successful. If anything I would recommend reading the book. Because I think if you wanted to make this movie you have it stray a little further and create its own identity. Trying to capture everything the book offered in just over 2 hours is an impossible task.