The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

2013 movie for teenagers and middle-aged women who want to be teenagers

Rating: 12/20 (Jen: 14/20; Emma: 15/20)

Plot: Katniss and Peeta, both from the land where people have stupid names, are fresh off their shared victory in the 74th Hunger Games. Now, they have to tour the other districts so that old people can whistle at them and flip them off in futuristic ways. Of course, in this dystopia, that gets you killed immediately. If you tackle an enforcer of the law, however, like Katniss's other boyfriend--Jimmy?--then you get beaten. The bearded guy gets all mad and forces past winners to compete in the next round of the titular game, and that--shockingly--includes Katniss and Peeta who everybody thinks are in love because that makes for a better story or something. Oh, snap!

I really sort of hate these movies. And I want to know what the feminists have to say about the character of Katniss Everdeen. Other than making a scene at her weigh-in or whatever where she hangs a dummy, what does she really do in this movie? She's just sort of being used, right? She's a pawn in a game that I couldn't understand all that well because I went into this without having read the book or forming enough of an emotional connection with either the first book or movie to remember it all that well. I think she might have killed somebody in this with her bow and arrow skills, but I couldn't be sure because the action sequences, though less shaky than in the first movie, still had so many quick cuts and camera zoops that it was hard to tell what was going on. Nothing in the arena made much sense to me. There was a stupid clock thing, poisoned fog, cartoon monkeys, a stone Lazy Susan, plans for electrocution. With the big reveal at the end which I don't want to give away even though I'm likely the last person on earth who had any interest in seeing this movie and then saw it, I don't see how that made much sense. The old characters didn't really grow at all in this. Jennifer Lawrence is nearly impossible not to like, but I still don't really like her in these movies. Hutcherson's Peeta is as boring in his moodiness as he was in the first movie, but apparently, that's what the teenagers like these days. They want their dystopian pop characters to be a little angsty. Woody Harrelson phones it in as Haymitch, the character with maybe the most potential to be interesting but manages to only be inconsistent. Hemsworth's Gale, Katniss's real love interest (maybe...who cares?), is in this a little more, and the producers do their best to transform him into some kind of hotshot heroic type. Oh, and there's that Elizabeth Banks who is all over the place. Philip Seymour Hoffman's paid to stand around and occasionally be cryptic; apparently, Hoffman was saving all his fuck's and big angry moments for the third and fourth movies. What are they doing with that character, by the way? Is he going to be computer generated like the monkeys? Donald Sutherland might give the best performance as a flatulent cliche. There's a litter of new characters, but none of them are interesting. Well, the one takes her clothes off in an elevator, but unless nipples are involved, I have to reason to care. I did like the old woman who was carried around like Yoda for most of the movie. It gave me a great idea for a Hunger Games Halloween costume, but I'm going to have to first find somebody strong enough and willing to carry me around. I was surprised at how silly the dialogue was in this thing. The conversations between Sutherland and Hoffman should have meant something or been foreboding or something. They sort of advanced the plot and set us all up for a big yank-the-carpet-from-under-us moment at around the time when the movie but not the story finishes. The silliest dialogue was during a scene at the back of a train where Katniss and Peeta are having a really deep conversation about what their favorite color was. Maybe it was just the overly-dramatic music during that scene, but I was moved. Make fun of the conversation Anakin and Padme (or whatever she was calling herself in Episode II) had about sand, but it's not any dumber than that conversation. I am not looking forward to the second half of this trilogy. And that's a sentence that I shouldn't have to type on here.