For we have seen the future...and it is inanely stupid

Rating: 1/10 (18 April 2014)

Not even fertile earth-mother Jennifer Lawrence, whose loins seem to be of provenance for the future of the human race, can salvage this putrid distempered dystopian film of just unforgivable callowness. The storyline boorishly borrows from a dozen others (including Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale") and must cravenly do so to compensate for its own paucity of vision and direction. A half hour into this movie and the director clearly has no idea what he is on about, why he is making this rotten movie. The art direction is unredemptively ugly, and the cinematography really insufferable. "Hunger Games" leaves the viewer hungry for a premise, hungry for something in it that warrants putting up with it for ten more minutes.