A couple of friends invited me to go see
The Hunger Games and I have exactly three things to say:
- It's too long, by maybe ten or fifteen minutes. I feel like this problem is pretty easily solved, though, by cutting thirty seconds or a minute from a lot of the extended sequences with no dialog from the second half, particularly all of the Peeta-staring-into-Katniss's-eyes in those two scenes in the cave. I've got it, he likes her and, by the by, I've got it, she's hallucinating, I've got it, there's a fire, etc. Move on.
- I do appreciate the lack of a happy ending. Obviously, there are two more movies to be based on two more books, and since I've never read the books this is the only text I have to go on; that said, the intimate sort of discomfort at the end was one of the few things about that movie that I would say I actually liked, ham-handed and open ended though it was.
- This is a perfectly fine movie; there are few things wrong with it, fewer things that are good about it, all in all a perfectly innocuous way to spend a Friday night. If I were you, though, and I hadn't seen it yet? Wait until it starts streaming on Netflix. It's not worth your $7.50 (or, your $9.50, in case they accidentally sell you a ticket to Wrath of the Titans. No, I don't want to talk about it.)
