Josh Hutcherson

The young lads in your family will thank you for taking them, but I'm not sure about anyone else.

Gothic pop...a ripping yarn for the big screen...

If The Hunger Games on screen doesn't exactly catch fire (as does its hero Katniss Everdeen), its savvy pop culture mash-up and the charge of teens in life-and-death peril remain intact.

John Milius' 1984 original may not have been a paragon of clear-headed foreign policy, but...Dan Bradley's remake predictably sidesteps—and, in one case, mocks—its source material's most interesting moments...

Nothing new, but given its solidly built kids' adventure, I'm not going to, y'know, look down on it.

A competent sequel...The Hunger Games could be fairly accused of being what it satirizes, but it's not without a thought in its deadly little head.

We're meant to feel the weight of Katniss' situation, and we do, but the picture can also fairly be called leaden...

If the franchise continues to feel a bit dull—heavy on the drama and light on the excitement, with pageantry long in the rear-view—there’s a respectable purity in the films’ political cynicism and populist fervor.