may and i saw 'the hunger games' last night and like most books-that-became-movies, the book was much better than the movie. first some things i did enjoy about the movie. first off, i give the director credit for trying to stay as true as possible to the books (although there are a few things here and there that was changed, but that's always going to be the case when trying to condense a book into a 2.5 hour movie). next, the acting by the lead characters were good. they did a good job of portraying katniss and peeta. lastly, there were some good action scenes and good cgi.
now the critics. my biggest problem was the pacing of the movie. it felt slow and disjointed. they tried to add as many scenes as possible in the book into the movie, but it would only be a short couple of seconds clips that made the movie feel choppy. they tried to add as much as they could into the movie, but didn't really explain everything, so i think if you didn't read the book, you'd be kinda lost. the other thing is that they focused a lot more on the love relationship side of the story than the survival side of the story. both are key elements of the book, but i thought the survival part should have been highlighted a bit more. other little disagreements were with the casting of haymitch and snow (but that's my personal preference) and adding color commentary during the hunger games (but again those are for the audience who didn't read the books). oh yea, and they went with the hand-held jerky camera film style which was a bit annoying. and lastly, the soundtrack wasn't very memorable either.
maybe i'm a bit more critical of the movie because i did like the books a lot and was looking forward to the movie, but i thought the movie was only okay. i would tell people to just wait and rent it when it comes out on dvd. again, good attempt to keep it true to the book, but not that well executed in my opinion.
