A decent movie for the time they had to cut it to

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2012)

After reading many of the reviews on "The Hunger Games," both positive and negative, I have to say that I had to see for myself what the movie was like before I could support either side.
I do feel though that people who give this as an "Unhelpful" review are sadly those who wish to see any fair to positive reviews of the movie be seen as just fan-worship or are "Battle Royale" fans who just want to try and ruin a decent movie - never mind there are probably those who can be just as ugly toward the other movie.
Simply put - it isn't exactly like the books, but it wasn't going to be. You can't exactly copy books to begin with - be it the film would be too long if you took it straight from the book (at least requiring an intermission - think "Gone With the Wind" long) and some scenes couldn't have been filmed in order to keep it PG-13 (and I don't mean bloodbath BTW), or were out of our present abilities art wise.
There are many pros and cons to the movie, but I'll start out with the pros.
First, the acting - all the characters, and even the extras, were spot on for who they were, what they were and where/what they were doing. All the actors I felt did a very good job, and in the case of the extras, who many get scale (which isn't a lot) who could honestly probably just phone it in instead of showing depth like they did, that spoke volumes. I felt like I was a character in the movie and experiencing exactly what they were.
The scenery, especially for the arena, was perfect and felt in many cases exactly what I saw in my head reading the book. And the scenes showing the OUTSIDE world of the arena were good.
I even liked some of the changes, such as Katniss' interview dress and a twist in one of the scenes.
That said, with all good, there are some problems. First, I feel it suffered a bit of a "Tree of Life" syndrome - you had too many scenes that you wonder if there was more footage but it had to be trimmed to fit the timeframe. One of these is NOT showing all the bloodbath tributes in the arena - they should've shown at least all the bloodbath tributes, because in several cases, that would've been the only time they were featured in the movie at all. This holds especially true with how nice they did the photowork for the deceased tributes.
Secondly, I think they needed maybe to keep two of the scenes in the arena - Rue's death and the final battle, closer to the actual storyline in the book. I understand costs, but in the case of the final battle, it could've be stronger. Some things too weren't explained clearly which could hurt those who haven't read the books.
Finally, the most annoying thing was the shaky hand-held cameras in some scenes. While I think they were used to try and create a real life feel - the shaking was a tad too much that it became distracting.
Overall, not as bad of a movie as some people will like to make it out to be, but the director will need to work harder to make the next installment stronger because there is room for improvement.