This much I’ll say for the clunky and bloated and inessential “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”:
It’s kinda bonkers.
This much I’ll also say about this prequel that is set 64 years before the events of the first “Hunger Games” film and arrives eight years after the fourth installment of the Jennifer Lawrence-led franchise:
“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” isn’t the worst case of mid-title punctuation in the Age of the Colon, but it’s near the bottom of the pack, alongside “xXx: The Return of Xander Cage,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows,” “Hitman: Agent 47” and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life.”
Title aside, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” (let’s just call it THGTBOSAS from here on out) is a visually underwhelming saga that tests (and fails) our patience with a whopping 2-hour-and-37-minute running time — and even with all that storytelling room, engages in some whiplash changes of character in the final act that make little sense and feel forced and contrived, as if the filmmakers suddenly remembered they had to draw a connection between this story and subsequent events the audience already knows about.
Just as the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy told the origin story of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, and in keeping with villain backstories such as “Cruella” and “Maleficent” and “Wicked,” THGTBOSAS goes back to the early days of the future ruthless dictator Coriolanus Snow, played by Donald Sutherland in the original quartet of films.
The talented and charismatic Tom Blyth (from the Epix series “Billy the Kid”) plays the 18-year-old Coryo, an intelligent and ambitious and at this point honorable sort, who with his blond locks and chiseled physique looks a bit like Hunger Games Ken. Orphaned and living in poverty with his loyal cousin and best friend Tigris (the wonderful Hunter Schafer, wasted in an inconsequential role) and his doddering and annoying Grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan),
Coryo is in in desperate need of winning the Plinth Prize so he can attend university — but instead of the money going to the most outstanding student, per tradition, there’s a twist this year. With ratings and public interest in the Hunger Games declining, it has been decreed that for the 10th annual games, Coryo and his fellow top students will each become a mentor for a random Tribute, and the best mentor will take home the Plinth! Got it? Let the televised draft begin, just like they do with the NFL, only in this case you really don’t want to be selected!
About that draft: THGTBOSAS segues into a “Coal Miner’s Daughter” meets “Romeo and Juliet” story when Coryo is paired up with Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from District 12 who wears an embroidered dress, has a down-home Appalachian accent and is prone to breaking into full songs, I kid you not, sometimes as she strums a guitar that looks like it was handcrafted for Taylor Swift.
As a member of a free-spirited nomadic troupe known as the Coveys, the sparkling Lucy Gray seems almost magical and mystical, and it’s easy to see how Coryo quickly comes to think of her as more than just a Tribute. Rachel Zegler is a shining star and the plaintive ballads she sings about love and loyalty and the hangin’ tree and such are actually quite lovely, but Lucy Gray is a quite ludicrous concoction, even for a “Hunger Games” storyline. Nevertheless, here we are, as Coryo does everything within his power, including bending some rules, to keep Lucy Gray alive as various, thinly drawn Tributes die gruesome albeit PG-13 deaths, all against the backdrop of some unimpressive CGI.
It’s in the third act that THGTBOSAS goes completely off the rails, with the story taking place primarily in District 12, and Coryo transitioning from noble hero to pragmatic self-preservationist to a borderline psychotic, double-crossing killer, for reasons not fully fleshed out. The Coryo/Lucy Gray romance takes a couple of turns that make little sense and lead to a dour ending. (After all, this IS the origin story of a monster.)
In classic “Hunger Games” fashion, some of our finest actors seize the opportunity to play ridiculously named characters who sport wild fashions, have silly hairdos and get to chew up the screen. Peter Dinklage is Casca Highbottom, the dean of the Academy and the co-creator of the Hunger Games; Viola Davis is Dr. Volumnia Gaul, the head gamemaker who’s also some sort of mad scientist; and Jason Schwartzman is Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman, who apparently is an ancestor of the Stanley Tucci character Caesar Flickerman and is the first TV host for the Hunger Games. They’re all terrific — and all hopelessly outmatched by the crazy-quilt script, the uninspired direction, the gray visuals and the overlong running time.
