The Hunger Games: Don't C it. (C)

Yuck. That's what people say when a kid throws up on a roller coaster.

And kids will throw up after watching the massively over-hyped Hunger Games. There was cinematography in the movie that was so shaky, it was like a roller coaster. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, but its bad. There are scenes with Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss talking to her friend Gale, and the camera is moving at a speed of 10 mph. And with a film hyped this much, you think they could at least afford a tripod.



Now it comes to the story. If you live in a cave you might be the only one who doesn't know this story:
 
"Katniss Everdeen of District 12 has volunteered in place of her sister in The Hunger Games, a fight to the                                    death among 24 teenagers. One of them is Peeta Mellark, a boy who has past relations with Katniss. Together they fight to win The Hunger Games."

I wrote that summary. Anyways, there was little to no human appeal in the film. It's sweet that Katniss is trying to win this for her sister, but Gary Ross has Prim the sister cry and act whiny throughout her 2 minute screen-time.

Another part of human appeal in the book that was cut were knowing the tributes. As tributes were killed off in the book, you came to know most of them by name. In the movie, it's a heartless death, just another person. You don't come to feel anger, shame, or disappointment among one's death. Just meh.

The visual effects are jaw-droppingly bad. In one scene, Katniss turns up the heat by wearing a dress and spinning around. Her spin makes (fake, but authentically real) flames come out from the bottom of the dress, and they look so bad. The flames look like their own torch, not part of the dress! Come on visual effects team, weren't you making the most overhyped movie of the year?

I cannot explain beyond these points my disappointment of Gary Ross's The Hunger Games. It's not all bad, since there were good performances by Banks, Lawrence, and Harrelson. What Ross and Co. should have done was actually make a film that feels like the book it was based off of, not a shaky rollercoaster of people being killed off heartlessly.