It left me hungering for something more...

Rating: 5/10 (25 March 2012)

I found the eagerly anticipated and much ballyhooed film The Hunger Games way too coolly detached to engage me or make me care about any of the characters. It's neither heartfelt, shocking, or emotionally visceral enough. Bereft of this kind of depth, it therefore lacked any strong resonance with me. I forgot about the film pretty much as soon as I left the theatre, and it provoked very little in the way of discussion with my film and literary savvy friends. There's just not enough there. And what is there is simplistic and writ large. It's no Lord of The Flies. And yes, I get all the Rome, NAZI Germany, and reality TV allusions. It also commits the cardinal sin of having no true, strong villain to despise. Society is the villain. ...Bad society, bad! All in all, something of a disappointment.