The Starving Games

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

I have absolutely NO IDEA why my parents let me watch this as a kid.

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.

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