Los muertos del hambre

I'm a sucker for spoof movies. And although I am of the opinion that Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg are a pair of talentless hacks, I keep buying their movies on DVD, in the faint hope that one of these days they will produce something half-decent. I decided to give them a fair shot this time around and actually sought out the real thing - "The Hunger Games" before I stuck Friedberg & Seltzer's offering into my DVD player, so at least I would have some idea of what they are trying to spoof.

The result is fairly typical Friedberg & Seltzer fare - grab a bunch of unknown actors who bare a passing similarity to the more talented originals, throw in a bunch of gratuitous pop culture references that are way too late ('Harry Potter', 'Gangnam Style', 'The Expendables', 'Avatar' etc.) and try to tell your story in under 80 minutes, including 20 minutes of bloopers and credits. In that respect, "The Starving Games" doesn't disappoint and nothing in this movie will come as a surprise to those of you who have seen other works by Friedberg & Seltzer.

This is their sixth collaboration as directors (sadly, there are more in the pipeline - next up is a spoof of Fast & Furious) but alas, they are not really getting much better at this sort of thing. The only decent movie they were ever involved with was back in 2000 as two of the six writers on 'Scary Movie'. Based on their career track since then, it is clear that it was the other four writers who actually had the talent.

That this film hasn't been picked up by a proper distributor and has basically gone straight-to-video says it all. I'd love to know where Friedberg & Seltzer get the money to keep financing this stuff. It's probably all my fault, as I keep buying all their DVD's! If we all stopped watching, maybe they'd go away and get a real job. The thing is though, I can't help myself. I *knew* this film would be pants. I just had to see it for myself just to see how bad it really was. I'm desperately trying to think of something positive to say about this movie. How about - "It's not the worst of the six films they've made?" A final word to Maiara Walsh - you're better than this.

This movie is a satire of all other decently made movies, I would bet Mel Brooks would think this movie's outtakes were much more laughable than the movie itself I watched and rarely laughed at all But when the outtakes were viewed I found them more entertaining. Sad to see someone try too hard to make it funny it wasn't.

I have seen funnier stupidity in other films that were satires. This one does not hit the mark. If the producers and writers sat down and watched other satires that were real box office gems They would then perhaps make something far more entertaining. Just stop with the boom boom and the Viagra jokes. It would work if they took some of those outtakes and pasted them in the movie. It would then be far more funnier.

Yet another 'modern spoof' by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, 'The Starving Games' has as its main focus of parody the 'Hunger Games' film. Alongside it, multiple references/spoofs of other hit films like 'The Avengers' or 'Expendables', or popular culture in general.

Friedberg and Seltzer have for very long tried to copy the parody style of David Zucker, with varying degrees of success: 'Scary Movie' was very good (though I believe that was more due to the other screenwriters involved, like the Wayans' brothers), as was 'Wrongfully Accused' to a lesser degree (though that was more due to Nielsen than their writing), but the rest of their works tend to range from regular to terrible; in fact, their more aimless, messy spoofs ('Epic Movie', 'Disaster Movie') are amongst the worst films I've ever seen.

'Starving Games' falls in the second category, with some genuinely funny moments (like the aforementioned 'Avengers' and 'Expendables' spoofs) but with a lot of bad ones (including, for example, the rather tasteless sex scene). Friedberg/Seltzer try so much to cram as many 'hip' references as possible, that by the end the final product is an unfunny, idiotic-looking mess. The fact no actor here managed to give a good comedic vibe, which could save some scenes (something Leslie Nielsen was very good at), makes this worse than it could have been; the actors don't even seem to try at all, and no one has any charisma (especially the main actress).

Unfortunately, while this is a slightly better attempt, It doesn't give me hope for their future career. The fact their comedies seem to keep having a degree of audience success means they will keep with this formula. Guess I will just have to learn to stop bothering with their films.

What does one really expect regarding this kind of spoof outing? The Hunger Games is certainly an above-average target given how serious it takes itself. What's too bad in terms of the humor used in The Starving Games is the amount of low-brow fart/elimination/kick-to-the-nuts stuff that seems to show up in lowest-common-denominator humor. Yes, it's a bunch of sight gags, but many are fun and well-done. The leads are pretty/handsome and very well matched to the characters in the Hunger Games. I imagine this movie benefits from lots of beer with some amount of pizza...so you won't starve while watching this outing and a bit of judicious inebriation will certainly help elevate this movie.

Review: This movie was totally not funny. For a spoof movie, I was expecting at least a couple of laughs, but the director must have been about 2 years old because the whole thing just seemed immature and silly. The only thing that a found a little amusing was the Pink bearded Mr. T lookalike, but that was about it. Some parts go really over the top, and make you wonder if they actually watched the movie before they brought it out, which was why it went straight to DVD. You won't be seeing most of the actors again, so there isn't much to comment about there performances. At the end of the day, it's just another spoof movie. Disappointing!

Round-Up: As there dint that much out on DVD, I thought that I would give this movie a go, but I knew what to expect. I didn't really pay that much attention to the film after a whole because I just couldn't find anything funny. There are a few references to some other movies like The Avengers and The Expendables, but the director didn't do that much with the material. If you want loads of laughs then this is definitely not the movie for you, but if you want to play "Name That Film" then you should give it a go. A total waste of time and budget.

Budget: $4.5million Worldwide Gross: N/A

I recommend this movie to people who are into there spoof movies, but don't expect much from this a Hunger Games make over. 2/10