Critic Watch Blog #2: The Hunger Games- Catching Fire- Sean Cooper

Critic Watch Blog #2: The Hunger Games- Catching Fire- Sean Cooper

My critic watch blog entry follows Rex Reed’s slaughter-like review of The Hunger Games-Catching Fire. Reed starts his assault on the film right out of the gate with the following opening sentence,” Stale special effects won't lift this sci-fi thriller out of mediocrity”. I have not seen the film nor do I intend to. Not because of Reed’s review, but I’m not that moved by the franchise.

Reed makes clearly states his disdain for the film. There is no hint whatsoever of holding back what he thinks. As I stated in my first Critic Watch Blog, he is part of an older generation and his reviews are somewhat curmudgeon-like. In his review he uses terms such as “over-produced” and “utterly pointless” to describe the movie and refers to the original trilogy of novels as overrated.  He also explained that seeing in this film in IMAX was a better experience, but it didn’t help the movie at all.

Perhaps in an effort to stop the bleeding, Reed reminisces about how much he liked the original Hunger Games. He briefly goes over the premise leading up to where we are now in the second installment and restarts his assault on “Catching Fire”.  After explaining that Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) won the 74^th Hunger Games in the first movie they return home, but are told to return the start the 75^th Games and of course this all a trick by the evil President Snow, played by Donald Sutherland, to have them ultimately killed. Why? Reed writes it’s never really explained in the films narrative.

When I wrote about Reed’s take on Gravity, with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, he wrote about the special effects and CGI. In that film he explained that he liked it, but it just wasn’t a blockbuster. The CGI in Catching Fire seems to really aggravate him. His descriptions are curt, lending nothing to the imagination or even appreciation for 1. The fact that CGI is a symbiotic art form holds some major weight in the films of present day and 2. This is a science fiction movie.  

Since I did not see Catching Fire, I can’t say whether it was good or bad. At the same time, I have a hard time believing Reed’s take on every aspect of the film. He junks the premise, the CGI, 3-D, describes the acting as “uniformly awful”, and also laments the fact that there is a third installment in the works. This review is somewhat comical. I appreciate his success and realize he’s built his persona, though not entirely, on his witty sarcasm. I am looking forward to the next review.

Sean Cooper