Avis des critiques

The film fancies itself as a satire, but it'll take more than Toby Jones in a pompadour to persuade us this is anything other than purest untouched Hollywood venality, as crass as Dicky Attenborough pretending to flog Jurassic Park lunchboxes, and in much worse taste.

Oddly enough, it's when the games finally begin that the movie flatlines. Writer-director Gary Ross obfuscates the violence in a "tasteful" flurry of unintelligible motion. (If these aren't the worst action scenes of the year, they're certainly the most gutless.)

The first hour of The Hunger Games is promising, with hints of class warfare (another half-baked strand) and the chilling juxtaposition of dead kids and talk-show hosts. The implication that Katniss and Peeta are faking their entire relationship to attract those elusive "sponsors" is especially intriguing. But the strong concept wilts, the TV satire goes nowhere, and all you're really left with is a second-rate adventure with blank-faced heroes. You'd be better off staying home with a good book.

Strictly from geezerville, the social satire is as feeble as one might expect from a director, Gary Ross, who used to write jokes for Bill Clinton, and so broad as to be toothless.

Collins wrote in the first person, from Katniss' perspective, and while Lawrence is a forceful, fiery presence, she can't fill the hole created by the loss of the character's interior monologue. Ross has to double down on spectacle, which results only in shoddy CGI views of the future nation's decadent Capitol and, once the Games begin, a great deal of incoherent shaky-cam designed to ensure that rampant bloody mayhem doesn't threaten the all-important PG-13 rating.