Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Wes Bentley,  Donald Sutherland

The highly anticipated film adaptation of Suzanne Collins‘ hugely popular trilogy of Young Adult novels has me questioning anew what exactly it is that makes page to screen work versus not…and whether I’m better off either NOT seeing the film if I’ve read the book (and liked it) or NOT reading the book and seeing the film instead.  It’s probably safe to say that in most cases, the book is far superior to the film adaptation…although now and again, they “get it right” and manage to convey the brilliance on the page in equal measure to the screen (the film version of Ian McEwan‘s novel Atonement comes to mind, as do most, if not all, of the Harry Potter series of films…)  But I digress, as obviously such a debate deserves its own separate discussion.

Jennifer Lawrence, as Katniss Everdeen

Elizabeth Banks (as Effie Trinket), Woody Harrelson (as Haymitch) and Lawrence

I just recently read ~ and enjoyed ~ The Hunger Games myself, (which, incidentally, seems made to be a movie).  Although Harry Potter it was not (will anything ever match that creative genius?), I did end up getting sucked into and invested in the characters and the (albeit dark, savage and morbid) story.  It’s still a bit difficult for me to grasp that material of this nature ~ kids killing kids, by force of their “government”, no less ~ was intended for such a young audience (heck, it’s heavy subject matter for any age).  Despite getting drawn into the dystopian world of Panem and growing quite fond of many of the primary characters/protagonists (Katniss, Peeta, Gale, Haymitch, Cinna, et al.), I’m still not sure I buy (or perhaps I just don’t fully understand) the reasoning behind (the NEED for) the Games themselves in this fictional landscape.  It is, as a good friend of mine who has yet to read the book or see the movie said as we were discussing the premise, “a hard pill to swallow” and I couldn’t agree more.  All of that said, I felt there was great potential for a film version of the novel and thus had high expectations.  And while parts of it worked, overall it fell short for me in capturing the emotion, feel and intricacies that the book did. Continue reading →