Like its title, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” takes its sweet time getting where it’s going. Seriously, I would’ve gone with just songbirds, or snakes. As is, it’s two-fifths of the way to “The Ballad of Songbirds, Snakes, Presidential Origin Stories, Katniss Everdeen Wannabes and Problems with Pacing.”
Running times are relative, of course. In a separate division, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is an hour longer and twice as compelling. But “Songbirds and Snakes” takes its job super seriously, with more solemnity than imaginative excitement.
The “Hunger Games” prequel asks: How did future dystopian hellhole president Coriolanus Snow (played by Donald Sutherland in the previous “Hunger Games” movies) tip over to the dark side, where all the cool, misunderstood kids from Darth Vader to Elphaba to Cruella de Vil hang out? Pre-invested fans of the “Hunger Games” franchise, intrigued by the rising politico Snow’s young adulthood, may get what they want here. But without Viola Davis’ supporting turn as games designer Dr. Volumnia Gaul, director Francis Lawrence’s return to Panem would be DOA. She’s not written to be, but in Davis’ hands, not to mention her character’s high-voltage electrified hair, Gaul becomes the most sympathetic meanie in all Panem. Who could hate any authoritarian wacko with such plummy, peachy line readings?
Faithfully adapted (to a fault) from Suzanne Collins’ 2020 novel, “Songbirds & Snakes” features a Katniss precursor, Lucy Gray Baird, also from the region formerly known as Appalachia. She’s played, and sung, by Rachel Zegler (Maria in the recent “West Side Story”). In the 10th annual Hunger Games killathon, Lucy Gray represents District 12, and as a musically trained alum of the Covey, a traveling ensemble of troubadours, she has everything it takes to become Panem’s newest reality TV star.
She’s rarely far from her shiny guitar and a microphone, and her song lyrics recalling better days and the rebellion ahead stoke the crowd and scare the leaders. Little of this feels urgent or vital. While Zegler does what she can, there are times when “Songbirds & Snakes” turns into “Panem-ian Idol.”
On the other hand: Once the games begin (Jason Schwartzman plays the greasy MC), the unlucky contestants are confined to a bombed-out arena of little visual interest. I do like the crazy dangerous drones flying around, but otherwise the battles plod along, stack the corpses and set up the next round, violent but bloodless.
Eventually the narrative whisks Lucy Gray and her mentor Snow to safety and faraway forests. Is it true love? Can Snow stay in touch with his more humane instincts? Well, we know that’s a no. I honestly don’t know if the “Hunger Games” time has passed already, mysteriously. Back in 2014, the first “Hunger Games” movie worked very well, and Jennifer Lawrence wasn’t the only selling point. The books sold like crazy, with Collins’ tantalizingly brutal outline and YA rooting interests catching on like wildfire among readers of all ages.
At its heart, “Songbirds & Snakes” is a tale of a must-watch pop cultural phenomenon, its drop in the ratings and the measures taken to correct that decline. Peter Dinklage, master of suggesting rot within a corrupted soul’s bargain with the devil, skulks around as Snow’s manipulator, Casca Highbottom, wondering when and where it’ll all end. The movie going on around him has difficulty activating its central concern: the war of wills waged, in between romantic idylls, by Lucy Gray and “Coryo” Snow, the latter played by Tom Blyth, who doesn’t disappear, exactly, but is not helped by the thinness of the material. Not to mention the reiterative nature of the action beats, and even the line-to-line, moment-to-moment tarrying. Too often characters refer to other characters by their full names, as in: “You seem to be a good man, Coriolanus Snow.”
Fussy objection? Objection sustained. It’s the little things sometimes that make a ponderous 157-minute movie a ponderous 157-minute movie.
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‘THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES’
2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong violent content and disturbing material)
Running time: 2:37
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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