Calling this movie average would be a compliment

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2012)

A friend told me that a movie just like battle royale was on cinema, where a bunch of kids have to fight to the death. He also told me that reviewers had said the movie was macabre and shocking. So I thought "This movie cant fail". I was horribly wrong...
You start with a great buildup, showing the people that are to fight and their lives. There are 12 districts and each district selects 1 male and 1 female for the fight. This buildup lasts for like half the movie, where the kids fighting needs sponsors and to train for the battle. Woody Harrelson does a great job being the main characters mentor teaching them how to survive.
After a really long buildup before the battle, the movie has raised a lot of expectation. This is where the audience is supposed to be rewarded for their patience I thought.
Well, here is what happens.
The contestants run for a pile of supplies, and a lot of kids die the first minutes. The death scenes were boring and unimaginative. The main character flees into the woods with the supply pack she managed to grab and climbs up in some trees to sleep. Turns out some of the contestants teamed up - along with them, the main characters male district member telling the team "Ill help you find her" as she is good with a bow and considered dangerous. One big fail I can mention already here, is that she IS good with a bow and half the movie buildup focuses on how good she is with it - but she only uses it once or twice. That she is reluctant to fight just further make you lose interest in her.
The problem with the movie from here is that she teams up with a girl, which happens to die. A girl the audience has NO EMOTIONAL CONNECTION to , and she uses like 10 minutes mourning, crying and whining. At this point me and my friends at the cinema was facepalming, sighing and almost had to look away it was so bad. When that finally was over, we thought "Hey, now she is mad - this is when the action starts".
Wrong, she finds her male district friend (That earlier decleared his love for her) and the rest of the movie is a bad Hollywood love story, so bad in fact that I felt so awkward I could die in my chair. This was the second time I just wanted to leave the cinema, as these 2 poorly written and excruciatingly boring scenes took up tonns of screen time.
In the end the love couple makes it, yay. As if anyone cares.
The premise of the film is kids forced into a battle royale type death match. WOW! HOW CAN ANYONE SCREW SOMETHING LIKE THIS UP?
Here is how:
1: Create a superlong intro with characters that are boring and uninteresting, yet build anticipation. 2: Have the death scenes be boring, unimaginative and just straight out bad. (Shocking and macabre? Who said that a 109 year old church priest?) 3: Focus on drama and character building when you already feel nothing for the characters and the director/acting fails to change this. Actually hoping the main character dies says a lot about how bad the movie is. 4: Have a kid die and make the main character cry and hold a funeral for days. Yawn... Can you move along to the action? We already have no sympathy for the characters and don't care. At this point the only thing that can redeem the film is a huge gory fight. 5: ... which instead is replaced by a love story. Ultimate fail.
This movie pretty much failed in every possible aspect. Woody harrelson saved it some, and the buildup part of the movie was actually good. But having the concept of kids in a deathmatch and ruin it by almost no fighting or cool deaths, have the main character cry for a day over a kid we - the audience - don't care about, and add a FRIGGIN LOVE STORY that is so poorly written id rather use the book as toilet paper if i had it? No thanks.
This movie gets a 4, and that is being nice. Seeing this movie average at an 8.0 makes me lose hope in humanity. Clearly peoples standards has fallen so low that they can criticize failure when they see it.