Hunger Games - The Movie

The last night of our whirlwind family visit Dr. J and I managed to see a 9:30 showing of the Hunger Games.  A few years ago I stumbled upon the book.  I read it in a night.  I had to wait a year for the next book to come out and then another year for the series to end but it became one of my all time favorite stories and the character Peeta, in my own opinion, the best literary love interest ever!  Ignoring his ridiculous name, who knew baking could be such a desirable profession :)  When Dr. J was flying out to New York last year I stuck the first book in his bag.  When he came back he asked for the second, and then the third.  So while we had access to a free babysitter we had to see the movie, the first we've seen in the theater since probably Tangled.  Because of timing, we ended up watching it on the IMAX screen, hello slightly overwhelming.  I had just reread the first book and initially after watching the movie was disappointed.  There is so much emotion tied up in the books and with the rapid pacing the movie followed it just was not able to capture everything going on in the characters minds.  Things that I felt were extremely important to the original story line were either rushed over or absent.  Some of the dialogue that was changed, I felt carried more weight in the original writing.  Cinna and Haymitch were not as I pictured.  I liked the movie, I just was wishing for more.  A few days have gone by and some of that disappointment has left.  I appreciate that the movie really did stay remarkably true to the book (probably because Suzanne Collins wrote the original screen play) and while the movie character Peeta wasn't everything I hoped for (thanks to the rushing pace and the actor Josh Hutcherson, I mean could we not find someone just a smidge bigger then Katniss?) I would definitely add the movie to my collection and watch it again.  I also was excited to read that they will be splitting the final two books into three movies.  Hopefully there will be time in the next movies for a little more character development.