Movie Breakdown: The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes
Pre-Screening Stance:
Admittedly, I’m not exactly jazzed about The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes. The last couple of films didn’t really work for me, and the decision to bring back director Francis Lawrence feels like a tired move. Furthermore, and this is probably the real issue, the trailers just haven’t sold me on it. Who knows though, maybe it’ll be a pleasant surprise.
Post-Screening Ramble:
The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes is a weird ride, but I liked it. Let’s start with the plot, which is centered around Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), a young man who is eager to restore his family’s legacy, and Lucy Gray (Rachel Zegler), the tribute that he’s been assigned to mentor during the 10th Hunger Games. Essentially, Snow has a chance to win a fat cash prize if he’s able to get Lucy Gray to put on a good show at the games, so he goes about convincing her to showcase her abilities, which mostly comes down to singing and kind of talking like a southern belle. Are these things that can help her in an arena where everyone is trying to kill one another? Nope! But again, he just needs her to be entertaining, and that she can be.
One of the things that’s stuck with me after seeing this film is whether or not I’m supposed to like Coriolanus Snow. Clearly, he grows up to be mega-asshole President Snow (played by Donald Sutherland in the other films), but his machinations here are surprisingly earnest. And really, I think this is why I found myself into The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, because how often do you see a movie this big and expensive that’s focused on the humble beginnings of an evil dictator!? Toss this in with the extra performance from Zegler, whose character has a penchant for sassy remarks and over-singing at seemingly inappropriate times, and you’ve got a movie that never really goes where you expect it to. It’s an entirely unwieldy approach, and one that works … until it doesn’t in the third act where director Francis Lawrence ditches that pizazz and opts to hastily stumble to the finish line. This clunky section is also the only stretch where the 2.5 hour runtime starts to feel long, which is too bad considering how nicely paced it is up until then. Oh well, at least the rest of it works.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes is out tomorrow, November 17. I think it’s worth your time, if only because it’s just so out there.
One Last Thought:
Yeah, sure, he’s pretty much the only person doing anything remotely funny in the movie, but I found Jason Schwartzman’s Lucky Flickerman, who’s a sort of oblivious reporter/magician, to be a riot.
