*WARNING: This review may contain spoilers if you haven't read the book!!!*At 12:05AM on March 23rd, I entered the glorious theater and watched the screen fade to black.... AND THEN TO THE HUNGER GAMES!!!!! Okay, so it's been about 3 years or so since I read the first book, so I don't remember all the great details that made me fall in love with it, but I do know that The Hunger Games movie was absolutely amazing! I laughed, I cried, I swooned, it had all the elements that I remember from reading the story, and then some!
The connection between Katniss and all of the other characters was amazing. I especially loved the scenes between Katniss and Peeta, they're so adorable and their on-screen connection was so real! I can just imagine myself sitting at home in my district and watching 74th annual Hunger Games and falling in love with the starcrossed lovers from District 12! Their chemistry was almost palpable! And like always, the beginning scene where Katniss volunteers for Prim just broke my heart all over again. Gale isn't in it much, but I was glad that they stuck to the book on that one.
The filming and special effects were really fantastic. When Katniss is stung by the tracker jackers I seriously felt like I was the one hallucinating and stumbling around in the woods. And the Girl on Fire effects were FANTASTIC!!! I think Gary Ross and his entire film team did an amazing job with everything, and I really hope he'll be directing Catching Fire!
I don't want to give too much away so I'm going to keep this short, but most of all YOU NEED TO SEE THIS! If you weren't planning on it, then go buy your tickets and see it RIGHT NOW! Seriously, this movie did the book so much justice, and while some things were changed, overall it was so true to the story and I just loved every bit of it!!! I commend Gary Ross and the entire film crew, along with the amazing actors who made this movie so special! Also, I plan on seeing this about 20 more times :)
