Fans of The Hunger Games novel were grumpy when 21-year-old indie ingenue Jennifer Lawrence was cast as feisty 16-year-old heroine Katniss Everdeen for the film adaptation. Despite her Oscar-nominated turn in 2010's Winter's Bone, Lawrence was dismissed as too old, too blonde, too buxom, and too fair-skinned to play a waifish teen that author Suzanne Collins depicted as "olive-skinned, dark-haired, and [possibly] biracial." Now that the film, which follows Katniss as she's drafted to compete against 23 other teenagers in a reality-TV fight to the death, has finally hit theaters, critics and audiences have actually seen Lawrence's performance. The emerging verdict: She's "perfect." Does everyone agree?
No. She's all wrong: Lawrence's "seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission," says Manohla Dargis at The New York Times. Perhaps when she was younger, Lawrence "looked hungry enough to play Katniss." But it's not easy to portray one of the few action heroines who isn't a "vaguely sexualized" damsel in distress when you're as curvy as Lawrence. Worse, her bland, disengaged performance fails to convey the life-and-death terrors Katniss faces.
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