The Hunger Games

After months of hype it was until recently that I finally got excited about The Hunger Games. I have never read any of the books and honestly didn't know a whole lot about it. As the time of for the movie to come out got closer though I kept getting more and more excited about it. Then on Tuesday a friend of mine got free passes for a early screening the day before opening and oh yes I got to go.

I guess not reading the books and not knowing anything about The Hunger Games worked out well for me. I didn't know what to expect and what I got was a great time.

The acting was fantastic and after a couple great roles under her belt I think that this is the movie that will finally blast the career of Jennifer Lawrence into the stratosphere. The rest of the cast also did great. It is always nice to see the likes of Woody Harrelson and Donald Sutherland who never seem to put in a bad performance. Even the child actors that were in this movie were pretty good which is always nice.

The sets and backgrounds were also fantastic. Its quite an amazing change at the first part of the movie when you see the small dirty mining town from District 12 and then when we go to the wonderfully unique looking city of the capitol. This extends to the style of clothes they wear in both places as well. Then for the last hour of the movie where it was pretty much exclusively in the forest where The Hunger Games took place.

While running at about 2 and a half hours The Hunger Games never feels like its running long or dragging along which is always a great accomplishment for a movie of that length. I give The Hunger Games a 8 out of 10 and can't wait for the sequel, maybe by then I'll have read the books.