The Hunger Games - One for the kids  

The Hunger games is rated a 12 Certificate (in the UK at least) and that's probably for a reason. I'm guessing it means that no one OVER the age of twelve should bother to watch it.

I imagine that any twelve-or-under will be well and truly wowed at the terrible vision of a future gone bad, where the poor are hunted and laughed at by their evil rich oppressors. However, being a man in my thirties, I kind of found it all a bit patronising. The rich are portrayed as evil. The poor good. This (pretty unsubtle) message is then repeated for almost every one of the hundred and twenty minutes this film runs for.

A girl (with a silly name) is selected from one of the noble, long-suffering poor communities and forced to compete (i.e. kill) another twenty-three kids from neighbouring noble and poor districts. If fact, she wasn't even selected. She was the first ever volunteer for certain death, because her equally (but slightly more weedy) noble and poor younger sister was the one selected, but this noble and poor girl offered to die on her behalf. All the time this is beamed across the world for the evil rich people to enjoy.

Luckily, the film's noble and poor heroine is so noble and poor that, despite being a crack shot with a bow and arrow, she's too noble and pure to actually kill any of the other noble and poor kids (okay, she kills about one, but that's it). They kind of do each other in for her, making sure she stays noble and virtuous at all times.

Anyway, the first half of the film shows us how badly the noble and poor people are exploited by their evil and rich oppressors and the second half shows us how the noble and poor girl with the very silly name runs about not killing people in order to win.

I kept hearing other reviews talk about how The Hunger Games is `the new Twilight.' And they're probably right. Twilight was `vampires for children/teens' and The Hunger Games is sort of an action/romance film for teens. They'll love it.

Remember: poor = good. Rich = bad (just in case you didn't get the film's particularly unsubtle message).

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights