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The Hunger Games

THE HUNGER GAMES directed by Gary Ross, written by Ross from the book by Suzanne Collins, with Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth. 142 minutes. An Alliance release. Opens Friday (March 23). For venues and times, see Movie Listings. Rating: NNN


Gary Ross can breathe easy. His adaptation of the popular Suzanne Collins novel – the first in a trilogy – will definitely satisfy the rabid fans breathlessly waiting for their fave book to come to life.

Too bad the book has been sanitized in order to get the rating that will help pull in the largest audience.

Sometime in the future, 12 downtrodden districts that have been defeated in a brutal civil war must each serve up two children – picked by lottery – as “tributes” to participate in a fight-to-the-death spectacle for the delight of their overlords from the Capitol.

When her younger sister is chosen, Katniss, a wizard with a bow and arrows, volunteers to take her place. She and Peeta, the boy selected for the Games from her district, are then whisked away to prepare for the big fight.

Before the big event, they’re lavishly feted and treated as celebrities before being thrown into the ultimate reality show.

This is very creepy stuff, but it’s served up here without much grit. The toning down of the violence in the actual battle isn’t a bad thing, but the pleasure the spectators take in watching desperate children try to survive is barely conveyed. The Hunger Games is intended as a commentary on reality television run amok and on the exploitation of celebrity, and you can’t make that point without making a strong statement about the complicity of the audience.

And a seemingly small but related point, on the film’s erasure of class matters: no way Katniss and Peeta, who live hand-to-mouth in their coal mining town, wouldn’t get super-sick after eating all that sumptuous food on the train to the Games. In the book they puke their guts out.

Ross is less interested in those elements than he is in his central character Katniss. She has the qualities of a hero but not those of a celebrity, who must be likeable in order to get the sponsors she needs to win. Good thing he has Jennifer Lawrence on board to play the role. Much of the action in Collins’s book happens inside Katniss’s mind – her terror, her loneliness – and Lawrence has the skills to convey that kind of inner turmoil. She has major star quality.

The rest of the cast is very good, too, especially Liam Hemsworth as the boy back home, who’s only in a few scenes but makes a huge impression Stanley Tucci as the smarmy talk show host and Lenny Kravitz, who shows once again – he was a surprise knockout in Precious – that he’s got a great screen career ahead of him.

The Hunger Games is an art director’s dream of an opportunity, and it’s not wasted. District 12’s greys and browns offer a sharp contrast to The Capitol’s outrageous fashion and spectacular – almost neo-Fascist – architecture.

So – there’s some decent filmmaking here and The Hunger Games is definitely entertaining, but given its potential to be a devastatingly dystopic film event, this is definitely a missed opportunity.

No matter. Make room for the sequel.

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