I was at work this morning and during a lull, my boss put on this movie. I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to it but I eventually had to ask him to watch the rest of it at home.
I'll be the first to admit that parody films are not my forte. I don't like gross out humor and I find a lot of them to be completely immature. But I'd seen The Hunger Games so I figured I could just glance over every once in a while if a joke was funny. I like the 5 minute parody videos on youtube (you know, How It Should Have Ended and such) so I figured it would be like that.
I was wrong.
Some of the jokes were nonsensical. And by that I mean I was trying to figure out what the joke was and why it was supposed to be funny. Jokes that make me wonder if the writers just threw in random inside jokes without explaining them are not jokes at all. They're just random events the movie treats like jokes.
Some of the jokes were needlessly gross. I will never understand how anyone finds this kind of humor funny but I thought surely professional writers would know how to actually write something that could be funny to someone other than themselves in their addled state of mind. I was wrong. The ridiculous sound effects made it all the more difficult to tune out by the time I knew this wasn't going to be funny. Even the jokes that did have punchlines that pertained to the actual movie it was parodying were so predictable, I literally said "called it" at one of them after it was said.
No one in this movie looks like they care at all about what they're doing. This is such an obvious attempt to cash in on a popular franchise, it's shameful. I get that movie studios are businesses and they need to make money to keep afloat but at what cost? Nothing about this movie showed any effort whatsoever. I would have thought, for a movie parodying The Hunger Games, that they would have at least made fun of the dim lighting of that movie instead of just making everything brightly colored. Was this so you could see every disgusting physical joke more clearly? It doesn't come off as a parody if you can't even make fun of things that actually lend themselves to humor.
I hate movies like this. 4.5 million dollars and there was no talent or effort in this movie. I'd seen the actress who played the Katniss mockery in other things so I know she can act. I felt a bit sorry for her that she actually thought this would be anything but embarrassing. As someone who would love nothing more than to be a screenwriter, it's an insult to people who put real thought into their writing when these kinds of movies get made. There's Hunger Games fanfiction better than this. And anyone can write fanfiction.
I know what you're thinking, how dare you judge this movie when you didn't even finish it. But have you ever watched a movie that started out badly and finished as a masterpiece? Because I haven't. And if there was clearly no effort in the beginning, there's no way there was suddenly effort at the end.
I really hope Hollywood learns from movies like this and the genre dies out. In the meantime, I'm hoping this review dissuades anyone with a sense of humor and any class whatsoever from watching this terrible, terrible movie. Or even listening to someone else watching it.
I'll be the first to admit that parody films are not my forte. I don't like gross out humor and I find a lot of them to be completely immature. But I'd seen The Hunger Games so I figured I could just glance over every once in a while if a joke was funny. I like the 5 minute parody videos on youtube (you know, How It Should Have Ended and such) so I figured it would be like that.
I was wrong.
Some of the jokes were nonsensical. And by that I mean I was trying to figure out what the joke was and why it was supposed to be funny. Jokes that make me wonder if the writers just threw in random inside jokes without explaining them are not jokes at all. They're just random events the movie treats like jokes.
Some of the jokes were needlessly gross. I will never understand how anyone finds this kind of humor funny but I thought surely professional writers would know how to actually write something that could be funny to someone other than themselves in their addled state of mind. I was wrong. The ridiculous sound effects made it all the more difficult to tune out by the time I knew this wasn't going to be funny. Even the jokes that did have punchlines that pertained to the actual movie it was parodying were so predictable, I literally said "called it" at one of them after it was said.
No one in this movie looks like they care at all about what they're doing. This is such an obvious attempt to cash in on a popular franchise, it's shameful. I get that movie studios are businesses and they need to make money to keep afloat but at what cost? Nothing about this movie showed any effort whatsoever. I would have thought, for a movie parodying The Hunger Games, that they would have at least made fun of the dim lighting of that movie instead of just making everything brightly colored. Was this so you could see every disgusting physical joke more clearly? It doesn't come off as a parody if you can't even make fun of things that actually lend themselves to humor.
I hate movies like this. 4.5 million dollars and there was no talent or effort in this movie. I'd seen the actress who played the Katniss mockery in other things so I know she can act. I felt a bit sorry for her that she actually thought this would be anything but embarrassing. As someone who would love nothing more than to be a screenwriter, it's an insult to people who put real thought into their writing when these kinds of movies get made. There's Hunger Games fanfiction better than this. And anyone can write fanfiction.
I know what you're thinking, how dare you judge this movie when you didn't even finish it. But have you ever watched a movie that started out badly and finished as a masterpiece? Because I haven't. And if there was clearly no effort in the beginning, there's no way there was suddenly effort at the end.
I really hope Hollywood learns from movies like this and the genre dies out. In the meantime, I'm hoping this review dissuades anyone with a sense of humor and any class whatsoever from watching this terrible, terrible movie. Or even listening to someone else watching it.