In a nutshell, The Hunger Games is a cross between First Blood,The Running Man and The Truman Show. Instead of Stallone ,Schwarzenegger or Carrey, the star of this one is Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen who must survive the elements as she is being pursued by 23 other contestants for the amusement of the city in their own Gladiator games. So what's the purpose of these games? It's nothing more than a facade to keep the citizens of this dystopian city under check, to stem any idea of rebelling against its leaders.

So, did this live up to the hype that's been going around regarding this movie? Not really. It's not as great as I've heard it to be. But it's not as bad either. I think what I feel after watching this is that it could have been so much better. I think that the "relationship" between Kat and Peeta is so underdeveloped that I had a hard time believing that Kat would even consider Peeta to be a love interest. I saw zero chemistry. I can look past that. But I can't look past the major cop-out by having those that are overseeing the game to suddenly allow for two winners. The whole concept of what I went into the movie in the first place just got shot down. I dunno, like I said, it could have been so much better. If there was one standout in the movie, it was definitely Jennifer Lawrence. I like her as an actress and she alone is what keeps the movie afloat.

There are other things though that I found interesting to keep my attention going. Definitely worth a Rent, but nothing more.

There were just so many instances of "I would have done this differently" in this movie I started writing them all down and have a really screwed up version now... actually close to the fake trailer made by Kevin Tanchareon concept trailer.   There was just so much, I don't want to say style without substance but things that didn't work for me.  Did anyone else think the Capitol looked too much like Equilibrium instead of some decadent palace city like Dubai?  And the guy running the games just had the worst sort-of old fashioned villain look to him, like he should have been tying a woman to a train track.  I kept thinking the guy in charge of the show should have been someone like a Bob Balaban, a regular guy whose job is televising killing people, a whole "evil that mundane people can do."

And I had a big problem with the design of the games itself once the Muttations and the wall of flame came into play.  Keeping with that "evil that regular people do," I would have had the Capitol keep their hands clean: "hey, you all agreed to this, WE didn't kill your kids, they kill each other.  We trained them to defend themselves, too.  Want to be mad at someone, be mad at the other districts!" (Because part of the point of the games is to keep the Districts from uniting, isn't it?)

I remember someone saying on Twitter "imagine Paul Verhoeven directing Hunger Games."  Once that thought's put in your head, how can this movie come close?

Re-watched this today as I didn't remember anything from it. It's been 2 years so a lot was definitely lost over time. I will comment on the fact that after the first 15 minutes of the movie, it goes into a major snooze fest. From the moment she is whisked away, prepped, trained and paraded for the audience, it's unbearably slow. It's not until the games actually begin does it get interesting. I still think that it's too 'kid friendly'. A concept like this has to be justified and even though it's about violence, we hardly see anything because most of it is done off camera and what we do see on camera is covered up by quick edits. The other thing I found very annoying the first time around that I forget to comment on is that I absolutely at whoever the Costume Designer was. Their idea of a futuristic world consist of the 'Elite and Powerful' dressing up as "clowns"? They all look idiots. With all that said, I still give this movie 3 1/2 Stars.