My son and I went to see Hunger Games today. Bottom Line: I enjoyed the movie although I was close to flat-lining it for a while. Watched from a movie theater of Twilight-loving teenage girls, I can see it has its place at the top of a new genre depicting young female action heroes.

I knew I was in trouble when the entire row of girls in front of us, seriously, all of them, started gushing from the very first moment something about Twilight came on in the previews. I have no idea what it was. It could have been the font used, the music, the topography, something. They knew what was happening before anyone else in the theater. The girl on the far left started talking about the movie coming out in December well before any recognizable character from the movie appeared on-screen. When the preview revealed the movie would release in November, the entire row of girls became giddy and overcome with emotion that Twilight was being released sooner than they thought. It was a very moving moment for them. And I should have known I was in trouble.

I will try hard not to ruin the movie, but I have two major complaints. If I recall correctly, the districts send to the capital tributes aged between 12 and 18. That’s a huge gap. Physically, emotionally and experience-wise, that’s huge. If I were in charge we’d narrow the age range down a bit, like 12-14, 14-16, 16-18. My thought is that just about any 18 year old will wipe the floor with any 12 year old. But that’s just me.

Second, if you can create something out of nothing (i.e. a hologram becoming real), why can it kill me but I can’t kill it? For example, if you create fish in a lake simply because your technology allows it, why can’t I catch and eat them? If you create a sheep in a field, how is it possible that sheep might attack and kill me but my weapons are seemingly harmless against it? That bothered me. Not so much the playing God part but the fact that the very weapons with which I can cut down trees, decimate competitors and a number of other “real” tasks have no impact on other creations.

The story centers on one girl’s challenges during the Hunger Games that I won’t get into except for how it relates to every teenage girl in the theater. This is a girl’s movie. It’s not a romantic “chick flick.” People die. Kids die. Kids kill kids. It is what it is. But you cannot escape this is a girl’s movie.

From the beginning, you see the beautiful young girl being strong, decisive and loving in an almost maternal role. She transitions to a strong, independent, skilled hunter as easily as walking out her front door. Then she’s a strong, independent, desirable young woman with some hunky buff dude putting the moves on her. We know the guy is hunky not because he reminds me a lot of myself at that age (okay, maybe not) but because every teenage girl in the theater let out some type of audible “oohh” or “ahhh” when he appeared on-screen.

So then the girl briefly becomes a victim of circumstance but then rises above to once again become the strong, independent young woman. Yadda, yadda, yadda and blah, blah, blah, she keeps the strong and independent mantle during the Games but is rotated through the maternal, hunter, desirable, victim persona throughout the movie.

At one point she’s helping another hunky dude with an issue. She gives him a kiss that the first hunky guy happens to see on TV. I kid you not, every girl in the theater moaned an “oowww” when that happened. They couldn’t have planned it better if they had scripted the Rocky Horror Picture Show audience participation manual. All of them, in unison, “oowww.” I think my son and I pissed off the girls in front of us because we really did laugh out loud.

So all the theater girls are rooting for the heroine and hunky guy number two. There is a hunky guy number three but he’s too much of an a-hole to let his looks give him a pass. We know this because the girl in front of me told the girl next to her that he was too much of a jerk for Katness (the heroine) to “hook-up with.” He didn’t get any “oohhs, ahhhs or oowwws” from any of the girls until near the end when they all cheered him.

The heroine does what she has to do and correctly starts thinking about what’s going to happen to her next. Then hunky guy number one re-appears on the scene. Once again, the theater erupted in a series of “oowwws” from all the girls. What’s Katness going to do? Then the movie ends. That by itself was awesome. It totally pissed off at least the row of girls in front of me. They had no closure and let it be known they were not happy with the ending.

I don’t know exactly what they were looking for, but it’s a movie. It’s a movie based on a book. If you didn’t like the book’s ending, did you think the movie’s would be different? If you didn’t like the movie’s ending, did you read the book? Don’t sit there and start talking crap about the movie you just spent all afternoon gushing over just to complain that it’s not fair you don’t know what happens to Katness next. Did you scream at the Twilight movies?

Anyway, I liked the movie. Again, no nudity and no swearing, so it’s okay for younger kids. Well, if you get past the whole kids-killing-kids premise. But even that was fairly sterile. Most of the death was implied rather than gruesomely displayed. If you see the movie and you’re not a 12-17 year old girl, you might really like it. If you’re a 12-17 year old girl, prepare to have your heart torn from you as you’re left wondering how Katness will end the movie. If you’re a 12-17 year old boy, don’t laugh at your date when she swoons over the hunky dudes.

Enjoy.