The Hunger Games : Catching Fire

I used to make fun of tweens for getting online and buying tickets super early for movies like Twilight, Harry Potter, and now The Hunger Games. But ever since I was biking back from Fun Fun Fun Fest and saw a girl who looked like any ordinary hipster walking and talking to herself, my outlook has changed. Why, you ask? Because this girl was tweaking and yelling “Where’s the crack at? Where’s the crack at?” I honestly thought she was joking until I rode by her and she freaked out; exposing her cracky eyes. She then yelled that I scared the crap out of her (I hope she wasn’t being literal) and proceeded to go off on social issues using crackhead logic. For example “Question! Question! Why come when the President gives a speech, his mic cant be made out of crack? That’d be tight right?” Ok, so maybe I made that example up but everything else is true.  The point is, maybe it’s not such a bad idea to encourage these kids or recently former kids to fill their heads with dreams of falling in love with metro sexual vampires or gingers who suck at magic. It has to be better than letting them reach the point of this poor future Miley Cyrus. I’m sure Miley’s giving some black guy head for mali at this point but moving on.

The first Hunger Games wasn’t all that fresh mainly because Gary Ross sucks at directing action movies and the cgi looked like the first Techmo Bowl video game. But the franchise did itself a huge favor by signing Francis Lawrence to do the next three; and while he didn’t quite incorporate my idea of having regenerative milky bath scenes for Jennifer Lawrence, he did step it up.

This one picks up around a year after the 74^th Hunger Games and it’s almost time for Katniss and Peeta to go on their district to district victory tour. At this point it is painfully clear that Katniss doesn’t have any feelings for Peeta and that her heart really belongs to Gale. Why do the guys all have girl’s names? Just because you’re hungry doesn’t mean you have to take away your kid’s manhood too. Anyway, President Snow (Sutherland)senses that because Katniss was able to circumvent the system by saving both hers and Peeta’s lives, that the districts now have hope and that a possible rebellion might be on the horizon. So he brings in Plutarch (Seymour Hoffman) to be the new head of games and is counting on him to add in new wrinkles to not only crush and deflate the poor that are living in the districts but to find a way to possible kill Katniss.

The first 30 minutes of this movie is really boring as it’s more teen drama and a lack of chemistry between Lawrence and her two male counterparts in Hemsworth and Hutcherson. Have they seen how hot she is? How can you not make it more believable that you’d do anything to get with her? Thankfully Woody Harrelson (Haymitch) and Elizabeth Banks (Effie) provide enough laughs to carry you through this slow start. And that’s one thing I wanted to point out, this movie actually had me laughing out loud quite a bit, so props to writers for getting someone who walked in wanting to hate this movie to walk out loving it. I may be overstating it a bit by using that word love but once the action picked up, that’s when I really got into the movie.

While I Am legend and Constantine weren’t classics, they were both solid movies that had good action sets in them. And thankfully Francis Lawrence brings that same magic here. While it’s still pg-13 violence, he pushes the envelope enough to satisfy someone who is as blood thirsty as I am, and he utilizes cgi to enhance the scenarios that come up rather than taking you out of the experience with stupid dogs that look like moving blobs. Overall the acting is pretty wooden in it but Jena Malone shows up and almost steals every scene she’s in. She really makes you wish this movie was rated R, once you see it you’ll know why.

The only real complaint I have is that they didn’t play Alicia Key’s Girl on Fire every time Katniss spoke; or that Amanda Plummer didn’t yell “If any of you move, I’ll execute every motherfucking one of you!” But outside of that, I will give this movie a rating of FRESH!