The Hunger Games

I recently watched a bootleg of The Hunger Games. I felt cool that I was watching a bootleg, but also felt very uncool that I was watching The Hunger Games. I should have learned my lesson after the Twilight phenomenon that every book craze that women obsess over is the stupidest thing ever. I realize that the books probably had way more substance than the movie, and I'm not much of a reader, so I've never really been able to say that the book was better than the movie. Well except for that one time I accidentally read The Da Vinci Code, and of course The Goosebumps series. Nickelodeon just seemed unable to capture the genius vision of the legendary author known as  RL Stine.

The Hunger Games was basically the movie The Condemned with Stone Cold Steve Austin, only with way less awesome fighting scenes and action, and dialogue, and basically anything that could be considered remotely cool.  The protagonist is Katniss. Her family is poor and they live in district 12, which is the lamest of all the districts for some reason, probably due to the fact that they're so poor. Katniss's younger sister is unluckily selected as 1 of the 24 teenagers who will be forced to fight to the death, purely for the amusement of the rich people in the Capitol. Katniss volunteers to fight in place of her sister, because....well, because that's just the type of person Katniss was. She was loyal and kind and smoking hot, and pretty much absolutely perfect in every way. As far as every other person in the movie, I hated them. I hated them so much. Woody Harrelson is in it. He sucked.  Elizabeth Banks was in it. She sucked worse. Her performance and her character made me so angry I could've kicked a puppy. Relax, it's just an expression. I wouldn't actually kick a puppy, it's just that all the people that lived on this strange planet were incredibly annoying and awful and stupid looking. It's like if Mimi from The Drew Carey show and Carrot Top repopulated a nation, that's what the people in this movie looked like.

They train Katniss how to fight for a week or so, then they ship everybody up into this weird bio-dome type of thing to fight. Immediately people start killing each other. Katniss heads to higher ground as instructed by her sponsor/coach/secret admirer Lenny Kravitz. Yeah, Lenny Kravitz was in it. Katniss falls out of a tree and cuts her leg up really badly at one point, and then a tube with some Aloe in it randomly drops down from the sky. It was Lenny sending it to her. He was trying to help. Aww Thanks Lenny, but I've got a better idea. If you want to help her, how about not forcing her to fight to the death! Man it makes me angry. It makes me so angry that I could choke a puppy. Relax, it's just an expression. Katniss becomes the main target for the cool kids to try to kill. Why the hell were people forming alliance's is beyond me. You're supposed to kill each other, not make new friends. Katniss becomes close with this 13 year old chick named Rue. I'm not sure how Katniss was planning on approaching the fact that she would eventually have to kill Rue, but I'm sure she had a plan. Eventually she would just be like, "Oh hey Rue, listen it's been really fun running around, and trying not to get killed with you, but as it turns out I'm actually going to have to murder you now."

Rue gets killed by someone with more hunger, and Katniss was one of only a few survivors left over. The President of the world ( Donald Sutherland) then revises the rules to allow 2 survivors instead of 1. Woody Harrelson and them had been playing up the angle that Katniss and this guy Peter ( also from district 12) were lovers. This guy Peter was a real tool too. Katniss could do so much better, but Woody and Elizabeth banks insisted that if her and Peter pretended to be a couple, it would increase their likability. Yeah, like Katniss wasn't already likable. She was the hottest chick on that entire backwards ass planet. Her, not likable? When Woody said that, I wanted to take a puppie's mother out to a nice seafood dinner, and then never call her back. Relax, it's just an expression.

Katniss kills a few more people with her sweet archery skills, and she and Peter are the last two remaining Hunger Game contestants. Then without any reason Donald Sutherland changes his mind and declared that only one person can survive. What an asshole. Typical president of the world, always flip flopping. Katniss and Peter then decide to Romeo and Juliet themselves by eating poisonous berries, but right before they can another rule revision is implemented and they're both allowed to live. Thank god. Seeing Katniss walk out of that horrid experience alive, made me very happy. It made me so happy, that I wanted to feed a puppy a snow cone. That's not even an expression, but rather a statement of fact. Feeding a puppy a snow cone would make me very happy, and is something I would like to do in the near future. Watching that movie was painful. I wanted to turn it off several times, but I had to make sure Katniss was going to be OK. She was amazing, and I was not about to turn my back on her. Even though, I knew she would survive based on the fact that there are like 6 other Hunger Games books that have yet to become movies. I still had to watch just because of her.

Final rating - 3 out of 10
Well maybe  - 4 out of 10
Now that I think about it - 10 out of 10  but only because of Katniss