Cast: Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson
My Rating: 2/5
When it comes to mainstream movies, my taste rarely differs with the general audience. However, with this movie, my opinion differs.
This is the second disappointing movie of this year for me after John Carter. At least with the later, i knew what i was getting into with its terrible reviews and poor box office performance. But, with a domestic gross (U.S. & Canada) of more than 400 million dollars and being the only movie next to Avatar to stay at No.1 position for 4 consecutive weekends at the box office, i really expected a lot from this.
May be i am getting too old to watch a movie targeted at young audience, but to my defense, I did like the Harry Potter series and the first part in the Twilight series. Harry potter had a good story plot, Twilight had the vampire and werewolf mix that got me interested till the first part. This movie was aimed at both the male and female audience and probably that's why it made more than the Twilight series' box office which was aimed at female audience.
There are so many things that didn't work in this movie for me. This movie is about a death match between youngsters in a futuristic setting. The main character Katniss (i couldn't even take the name seriously for it rhymed with Cat-piss) volunteers for the match when her sister's name comes up in the lottery. The rest of the movie is about how she manages to win the match among 24 participants.
Having mentioned the story, the first flaw i found was that, most of the movies about a competition or match has a lead character that is an underdog. With this movie, there are so many other kids that are younger than Katniss and with limited skills. I just couldn't bring myself up to root for her. Also, there was no character development. I did not know much about Katniss' character except that she is skilled in hunting. May be I should have read the books first.
I also felt that having targeted the male and female audience, they tried to give both action and romance but it did not work for me. The action sequences were not intense compared to even the magic duels in Harry Potter. They should have made it more darker. I do not think much about how the events would turn out when i watch a movie, but i could clearly know what was going to happen. They need only one winner and the main character was already shown as skilled enough that you know she is going to win. Also, i felt that the director(or the author in the book) lacked imagination the way in which the characters that side with the main character were killed to make sure she doesn't kill them and in that way make it easy for her to become the winner.
Everything seemed so artificial and silly to me - the fire behind Katniss' dress to impress the audience before the games, the idea of impressing the sponsors to get help during the match that "Twilight" felt like an oscar-worthy movie.
