The Starving Games

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.

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.

It is not as if spoof comedies are terrible, on the contrary there are some brilliant ones out there like ones from Mel Brooks(Young Frankenstein) and Leslie Nielson(Airplane), even Scary Movie and Loaded Weapon 1 were fun if not quite in the same league. Like a lot of people, I do think Friedberg and Seltzer are hacks and not one of their previous five directing-writing efforts with Disaster Movie, Epic Movie,(two of the worst movies ever made), Meet the Spartans, Date Movie and Vampires Suck have been good. Curiosity and that there are some good examples of good spoofs out there were the sole motivations of seeing The Starving Games in the first place. This said after viewing, The Starving Games really is no improvements over the previous Friedberg/Seltzer collaborations though it doesn't quite stink as badly as Disaster Movie and Epic Movie. There are three fairly small bright spots, Maiara Walsh's game performance and the cute Angry Birds reference and Taylor Swift serenading a dying contestant moment(though that only raised a very meek smile). Visually, it's amateurish stuff, the impersonation costumes are also pretty good but that's it, the production values have low-budget TV quality all over it coupled with (thankfully sparse) poorly rendered effects, too many reaction shots(manipulating us into supposing to laugh) and some really choppy editing. The soundtrack feels thrown in and poorly placed, just there for the sake of it which makes it tiresome and sometimes tedious, that it isn't very catchy in the first place doesn't help either. The toilet-humour-heavy dialogue is vomit-inducingly crude, childish and unfunny is the best it gets which is testament to how truly terrible it is. The parodies themselves are no better, like Vampires Suck there is a main gag and other ones that are not as prominent. The parodies and impersonations are just tired, painfully predictable and often irrelevant, reeking of Friedberg and Seltzer just throwing like the most unsubtle of sledgehammers things in with no relevance or structure to them. And the jokes are drawn out especially the lottery draw one and the tasteless sex scene to the point of slowing the movie down. There was at least a story, unfortunately it comes across as a very thin one and is completely lost within the humour, which explains why some scenes were drawn out. The characters are just caricatures and nothing more, and despite Walsh's efforts you feel no shred of empathy for the lead character. The acting is awful, ranging from over-the-top(Diedrich Bader) to vacant. All in all, incredibly lame but is not Friedberg and Seltzer's worst. 2/10 Bethany Cox

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.