So, I Was On Netflix: The Starving Games Review

If you see this poster, just run. Run far far away!!!

There are numerous directors whose works have passed me by. I've only just now dabbled in the films of Quentin Tarantino, while most of Paul Thomas Andersons filmography remains a mystery to me. Luckily, the works of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have also eluded me, with such critically beloved films as Date Movie and Meet The Spartans remaining just bad trailers to me. But for this column, I decided to suck it up and finally give one of their films, a Hunger Games parody entitled The Starving Games, a watch.

Friedberg and Seltzer not only directed this movie, but they also wrote it. Such creative control on a project means they deserve much of the blame for how horrifically bad this garbage gets. The film doesn't contain jokes so much as it contains opportunities to punish those with brain cells with moronic "gags" and intense moments of farting. Poor, poor Maiara Walsh, who has the excruciating job of playing the protagonist, Kantmiss Evershot. She actually does an OK job imitating Jennifer Lawrence, but any kind of redeeming factors in her performance are outweighed by the awful jokes she has to partake in.

What is peculiar is the world of The Hunger Games is just ripe for parody, especially the lackluster first movie (the far, far, far, far superior second one came out too late to be dragged through the mud in this one, thank God). But the movie actually foregoes many elements of the movie, reducing characters from the movie like Effie Trinket, Rue and Cinna to cameos and even leaving out Haymitch entirely. Instead of making gags based on the movie its parodying, the filmmakers settle for making jokes surrounding Angry Birds, Annoying Orange and racism. Ah, the racism here is truly revolting, making one think for a second that they've found a piece of cinema deemed "too un-PC" by the standards of 1940's society. The worst bit of this is a parody of Siri, whose only joke is that she talks like a stereotypical African-American woman. She doesn't deliver jokes, we're just supposed to be rolling in the aisles that she talks like that.

As you can tell, this is the height of thoughtful cinema!

Even weirder than the lack of Hunger Games jokes in a Hunger Games movie is the scripts sloppy pacing. The movie runs about 70 minutes, and that includes two maniacal fake ending. You think this movie is finally over and...nope! Here's an Avengers joke! OK, that craps done, time to go home and....wait, bloopers??? Oh Lord have mercy, does this thing ever just finish? Thankfully it does, but those two bits are the best representations of a film so lacking in an actual story structure that it resorts to just random pop culture references to boost up its meager running time.

But by far the worst part of this entire motion picture is that some really talented people are a part of it. As I said before, Walsh does a fine job parodying Jennifer Lawrence, but the best impersonation comes from a Sylvester Stallone look-alike towards the finale. He not only looks like Stallone, but he's got his voice down perfectly. He's given nothing funny to say or do, but it's remarkable just how much like the real thing he looks and sounds. He, and every cast and crew member (especially Diedrich Bader. Dude, seriously, what the hell are you doing here?) deserve so much better than having to bring to life the atrocity that is The Starving Games.