Hunger Games 4 review

[Westside Steve]

Hunger Games 4 The Ballad of Snow and Songbird

Lionsgate

PG-13. 157 min

Years ago I struggled mightily to get through the trilogy of novels which I found to be bloated and boring. I had expected the same from the film versions but I found out that some artistic talent and boiling down the plot made all three episodes enjoyable. The books and films were very successful and of course with success comes the extension of a franchise and this one is a prequel. We know that in a dystopian world the games were created to intimidate/punish the people who lived in the districts and remind them it's a bad idea to rebel against the rich powerful and jaded rulers. Sound familiar? Two young people are selected from each district and placed into a surreal battleground to fight until there are only two left standing. This film is set many years before the first of the books and addresses some of same reasons and issues. There are a lot of similarities as well some good and not so good. One similarity is length, each of which coming in it ballpark two and a half hours but this latest edition seems much longer. Two the games are similar in societal impact but in this version they just aren't quite as interesting. Other episodes got deeper into each team from each district and their individual personalities. Here it seems like everybody is just thrown in at random. Beyond the protagonists Snow and Lucy Gray (Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler) the others aren’t really very interesting. All the films contain some wonderful futuristic imagery ingeniously blended with retro technology for a truly impressive look. On the other hand the actual battleground seems a little bit sparse. The cast? Let's just say that Peter Dinklage and Viola Davis don't rise to the level of Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland. Ziegler and Blyth as Songbird and Snow aren’t bad but…

So, because of the absence of chemistry and set up for any of the combatants, you never really understand the relationship between those two. You get the idea that there's a romance between the capitol official and the rebel girl; it's just never all that clear and never gets much clearer. On the positive side one thing that did impress me was the fact that Songbird is kind of a Freedom Fighter / folk singer whose underground performances serve an important role among the rebel underground similar to the recurring DJ in THE WARRIORS. Even more surprising I found that I really liked the Appalachian/Americana music the lyrics of which kind of tell the story of the movie as it rolls along. It reminded me a bit of THE TWILIGHT ZONE episode come wander with me.

Bottom line this entry is long and dull more like the original novel, but lacking the character development which made them interesting.

C-

WSS