Belated Thoughts on The Hunger Games

This movie has the worst poster design of any $400+ million grosser ever.

I only just watched The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) last night, which can go in the 'better-late-than-never' camp right alongside my 'Best-of-2011' List.

Anyway, I'm an ardent fan of Jennifer Lawrence right now. Not only as an actress, and for that red Calvin Klein she wore to the 2011 Oscars, but mainly because she holds her own really well during talk show interviews. I mean really well, like in a way which makes me want to pack up and move to LA to have her as a best friend. But I digress. She has charisma, and the movie and the Suzanne Collins book series are a bit zeitgeist-y, and it didn't look as ridiculous as the 20 minutes of Twilight: New Moon (Chris Weitz, 2009) I saw in a hotel room in Bangkok where Kirsten Stewart just bit her lip a lot and Taylor Lautner had a stupid wig on.

The Hunger Games, with at least one riveting set piece involving a nest of mutant future hornets, falls firmly in the 'pleasantly surprising' category. Jennifer Lawrence's commitment to the role works wonders, even if it does seem to be no-more than a Young Adult Sci-fi reinterpretation of the resourcefulness she displayed as Ree Dolly from Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010).

The stakes inherent in the plot inevitably become engaging because the central conceit of the nation's poor being sent to their death as grand guignol entertainment for the masses is a pretty riveting and scarily plausible one. And it's not hard to explicate within this the reality of young soldiers being sent to their death in war since time immemorial, which makes the plight of the participants in the Hunger Games sympathetic.

And for all the horrors of the dystopian future presented in The Hunger Games, none is quite as alarming as the quality of hairstyles. Between this and The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2009) I bet Stanley Tucci now displays significant pause before entering a wig-fitting.

IT'S LIKE A GAY TRIBUTE TO BEN-HUR WITH COSTUMES DESIGNED BY TEENAGERS

The costumes are overwrought in a way which over-accentuates  the whole French Revolution vibe of haves vs have-nots, and unfortunately they look cheap more than anything. Any self-respecting drag queen wouldn't be caught dead wearing half the clothes, even if it was to a Sci-Fi-Révolution française-themed Halloween ball. Actually, this slightly flimsy and decorous vision of the future nouveau-riche  is eerily similar to that depicted in that guilty B-Grade treasure Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975).

And yes, things like Peeta being proficient at camouflage make-up because he decorates cakes, and Peeta being strong from throwing flour, and Peeta being attractive to Katniss even though he is clearly short, seem totally ridiculous! Don't even get me started on the fact that the people controlling the whole thing literally 'release the hounds' as a deus ex machina (meaning that between the mutant dogs and mutant wasps the film was this close to featuring 'dogs with bees in their mouth, and every time they bark they shoot bees at you'). But the film does such an endearingly yeoman-like job of establishing a context for everything that these flaws become easy to overlook, or at least push aside. Also Lenny Kravitz looks good in gold eyeliner, even if his benevolent stylist is basically the same character as the nurse he played in Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (Lee Daniels, 2009).

Add metaphor

I honestly think the film even reflects the politics of the 99% a little better, or at least more digestibly, than The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012), where everything just seemed so portentous (j'accuse I hear you say). The whole notion of using hope as a tool of propaganda for the underclasses is definitely handled in a way which seems more appropos to the text, even with the presence of art nouveau-inspired artisanal beards and President Donald Sutherland in a rose garden (the Count Dooku of the series, I'm guessing).

Wes Bentley + Future Beard = Cultural Relevancy (Don't squander it again)

Overall I appreciate the time taken to flesh out main characters, and Ross paces the proceedings fairly well. It's going to be interesting to see whether the sequels maintain this quality of entertainment, but for now I'm in. It's solid B-level entertainment, if not the B-Grade entertainment I would normally be more enamoured with.

And damn it, if they had just cast Emma Watson in a major role I could have dropped a wicked pun like The Hunger Gamines for the title of this article...