The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Movie Review

Cast: Rachel Zegler, Hunter Schafer, Tom Blyth, Peter Dinklage, Viola Davis
Director: Francis Lawrence

At a bottom-bursting 2hours and 38 minutes, the Hunger Games prequel proves that bloated isn't always better, in this latest extension of the phenomenally popular Suzanne Collins series.

Set years before Katniss Everdeen brought down the Capitol and Panem, this latest focuses its attention squarely on Coriolanus Snow, the older version of whom was played by Donald Sutherland in the franchise and is embodied by Tom Blyth this time around.

With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow becomes alarmed when he's assigned to mentor Rachel Zegler's Lucy Gray Baird from District 12 in the hope of reigniting the passion of the viewing public whose love of seeing people slaughtered live on TV is slowing.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is yet another exercise in dystopia, but it's also, sadly, an exercise in willpower.

Split into three distinct parts, the film often feels aimless, feels its weight and feels occasionally messy in its final unwanted act. There are also bizarrely distinctly - and perhaps unintentional - Nazi undertones as the blonde-haired Snow mentors the Roma-gypsy-like Baird ahead of the live massacre on TV.  It's an unwanted comparison perhaps, but one that springs uncomfortably to mind as the Taming of the Shrew / Pygmalion protege-mentor relationship progresses.

While Zegler has some presence and brings a different tone than Jennifer Lawrence's more gutsy Katniss, it does occasionally feel like she's silently releasing an album off the back of the film given how many songs she dispatches throughout.

Far more effective in the odd satire about media control and the power of the classes and society, but it feels old hat when compared to the energy and urgency of the original Hunger Games films.

It's also relentlessly dour throughout, with the washed out colours and dulled aesthetics almost blanching out any kind of emotional attachment to any of the proceedings. Sadly most of the 20 or so tributes feel like raced over characters and the idea of feeling anything for them in the slaughter is merely ensconced in the fact they are poorer constructs of people rather than fully-formed individuals.

Far worse is the bloated final third part of the movie which switches into an odd love story and a somehow rushed ending that doesn't entirely give Snow's backstory the edge it needs to propel him into evil. Perhaps Collins' desire to show that even the bad guys had good hearts once wasn't the strongest pull here. (Just ask Disney, who seem determined to endow their best baddies with troubled pasts to varying degrees of apathy in audiences.)

Viola Davis chews the scenery with aplomb and Jason Schwartzman brings life to his presenter, but in truth these are the few highlights that shine in amongst the bloat of the Ballad.

Perhaps splitting the narrative over two leads harmed investment in the characters, and while that may be an issue with the source material, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes can't recover from a fatal flaw that leaves it feeling more like a humourless dirge and a cash-in rather than a full narrative necessity.