No longer will teens kill teens. Now adults will kill teens as well. So this week was kind of a bad week for getting high and seeing movies. Watching that redneck LSD video made me want to do LSD again, which I haven’t done in a few years. So I called up the guy and got a tab and dropped it before I went to watch The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
I’m never buying acid from that guy again. I don’t think it was his fault (he didn’t make it or anything) but the stuff was really cut and speedy and gross and it just made me feel itchy and agitated while I watched this movie. So excuse any bad temper in this review because I’m still feeling it a little bit as I write this.
So the thing about Hunger Games is that it’s at least better than Twilight in terms of books for teenagers that turned into movies but that’s about it. The books aren’t great and the movies aren’t great but they’re not total garbage either. The last one had a budget about the size of a Lifetime original movie but made a ton of cash, so they at least put some more into this for costumes and special effects and stuff, which makes it easier to watch, but it’s still not “good” in any real sense.
The plot, if you’re too stupid to follow along, is that every year kids from every neighborhood in America get sent to kill each other in the Hunger Games until one survives and then… that’s it, right? But last movie Jennifer Lawrence (who is way more famous now) managed to rig it so two people survived, which is Kind Of A Big Deal. Psych, though, because this year it’s a thing called the Quarter Quell which puts past winners in together to kill the rest of them off. Wow! What a twist! The same thing happens again only different!
So after her “victory tour” (and clumsy plot droppings about “District 13”) Katniss goes back into the jungle with Peeta to kill or be killed. And some people die and some don’t and then Katniss once again Changes The Rules because That’s Just How She Do and we get a very Matrix 2 style ending that does nothing but set up the next movie. I dunno, man. I’m really tired of movies being like just chunks of a bigger story. The thing is with, like, the Star Wars movies, you didn’t feel ripped off at the end of Empire Strikes Back, like you were just keeping your seat warm for the next one when the poo would really go down.
The other thing is that Katniss is, for all of her inner strength, kind of a patsy. Sure, she manages to get out of the Quarter Quell without actually killing anybody herself, but there are Other Forces At Work et cetera and I dunno. She’s just sort of there while more interesting people and things happen around her. The supporting cast is awful good in this one – Sam Claflin is probably the best thing about the movie – but when you know they’re just there to fill time and die it’s hard to get attached.
Disclaimer: I fixed all the typos and grammar errors but left all the other stuff in.