The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The best thing the Hunger Games movies could have done is getting such wonderful character actors to play pivotal supporting roles. It adds an air of importance to your film when you have such heavy-weights as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci and Jeffrey Wright playing your small, but important characters. And, of course, The Hunger Games struck gold when it cast Jennifer Lawrence as lead Katniss. Lawrence may be the most famous and coolest girl on the planet right now, and she's got all the talent to back it up.

Catching Fire picks up where The Hunger Games left off - Katniss and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) managed to win the Hunger Games by claiming to be in love although vicious President Snow (Sutherland) doesn't buy it for a minute. The two are about to embark on a victory tour of the districts and President Snow threatens Katniss, telling her she must prove their love to everyone or the people will continue to believe their joint win was an act of defiance and revolt. Of course, they somehow make the stirring revolution grow strong and soon President Snow and games-maker Plutarch (Hoffman)are crafting something special for the games Quarter Quell - a champions round, where all the participants are past winners, meaning, they are all proven killers and it will be even harder for Katniss and Peeta to make it out alive this time around. Among the new / old contestants are scene-stealers Jena Malone as ax-wielding wild child Johanna and Sam Claflin as charming, handsome, complicated Finnick. [Side Note: Why do characters in YA novels/movies have such weird names??]

Good news first: Once the movie gets to the actual games, it is fast-paced, action packed, intense and just plain fun. Bad news? It takes about an hour and a half to get there. That's an hour and a half of talking and scheming and plotting and lying, all while anticipating that awesome clock inspired Quarter Quell. Yes, the first half of the movie is sort of on the boring side. Yes, it could have been edited down greatly and still been effective. Yes, Effie's (Elisabeth Banks) AMAZING outfits nearly make up for the whole thing. But Catching Fire is a mostly good movie. Director Francis Lawrence took over directing duties this time around and ha managed to make a more clear, more straight-forward, more effective film. Of course, the movie suffers from the same thing that book suffered from - being the middle book of a trilogy and that's rarely ever a good thing, although its also not its fault. It's tasked with introducing new characters and new ideas, but never really going anywhere with anything (because, you know, there's a third book to tie everything together - this is just a placeholder). And that's not a bad thing, but it's also not necessarily a good thing either, especially that awful cliff-hanger ending. But again, not the movies fault in the least.

Mostly Catching Fire is a successful film. My own personal problem has to deal with recently reading Divergent, a book with a main female character who is both bad ass and complicated. She also is far from likable and manages to get her hands dirty a whole lot, which makes her journey more compelling. Katniss doesn't ever really get her hands dirty. Sure, she talks the talk, but she has other people who manage to save her from getting too involved in things like killing other people. She's a nice clean-cut hero for girls to look up to, someone strong but who never actually does anything too bad. Still, she's a way better role model for girls these days than Bella from Twilight, so I guess that's progress.

Grade: B