THE HUNGER GAMES - the movie

The Hunger Games probably wouldn't have been a must-see movie for me, but it certainly was for my kids, who both liked the first book a lot. I liked the book, too, but not enough to read on in the series immediately.

But after seeing the film, I did want to read on, and I did. Partly that was because of the vision of the filmmakers, who showed a dark, unwelcoming future where people live almost like pioneers, even as the ruling classes in the Capitol live in luxury. I wanted to find out more about this future; how did it come about and how did it work? The second and third books give more insight into these ideas; presumably the films will also.

Some things work better, in my opinion, on film, and I think it's very possible that The Hunger Games is one of those things. I'm a verbal, not so much a visual, person. So when I see a richly rendered vision I'm impressed. Personally, I thought that The Hunger Games did just that. Some may disagree.

I thought there were pretty decent performances. Yes, some of the tributes seemed to be caricatures of violent youths, but then again, that's sort of what they are. They are stunted in their growth purposely for these Games, and the performances more or less matched what I was thinking about those trubutes. But the main characters, Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch, all were very good portrayals with some depth.

I'm not a film reviewer; I tend to like a lot of stuff I see and I am not overly critical of things I don't know much about. What I saw here was a big budget movie that succeeded in conveying the vision and in telling the first part of a broader story. I'm not saying that this is a great film, destined to be a classic, but I think it's a solid entry into the subcategory of dystopian fictional films.

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