Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B

Watching The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, eleven years after the first film in the Hunger Games franchise and eight years after the last one, is a little like getting offered one more drink while you’re barely buzzed at a party that’s not very exciting. Okay, sure, why not. I’ll have another.

In the moment, this film is engaging enough, with several charismatic performers. Tom Blyth charms in bleached blond hair as young Coriolanus Snow, assigned as “mentor” to one of the District 12 tributes, a stunning songstress (hence the film’s subtitle) named Lucy Gray. Rachel Zegler makes the most of the part, particularly with an incredible singing vioce, but Lucy isn’t given a whole lot of agency. She doesn’t ever even use any weapons in the arena.

After three novels and four movies that made Jennifer Lawrence a superstar, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes feels a little regressive. Even as a clear nostalgia play and franchise cash grab, here we are given the early life story of the authoritarian President Snow of the previous films, now with a young man as the hero, saving a helpless little lady. At least Katniss was a badass.

Oh sure, this is presented with characters facing all the expected moral dilemmas, and we already know what eventually happens to Snow, which makes this movie this franchise’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels. A burning question might still be: did we really need this?

In the original Hunger Games, the games—in which, in case you’re one of the five people in the world who don’t already know, a group of teenagers are thrown into an arena to fight to the death—are in their 74th year. In The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, they are in their 10th year, which takes us back in time 64 years. Cornelius Snow is now supposed to be 18 years old, so I guess he was 82 the last time we saw him. The production design here is vaguely evocative of a society not quite as “perfected” as we saw it became later.

The story is presented in three parts, and the story beats are the only memorably unusual thing about it. This movie is two hours an 37 minutes long, pointlessly the longest film in the franchise. This is an average of 52 minutes per part, and we see the actual Hunger Games in “Part Two”—which end in such a way that the movie itself feels very much like it’s ending. By that point, we are indeed already a standard feature film’s length in. A group of seven very young adults sat in a line of seats two rows ahead of me, clearly big fans of the franchise, regularly raising the three finger salute from the previous films at the screen. And when Part III appeared onscreen, even one of those kids said, out loud, “There’s a whole other part”?

Indeed, Part III feels almost exclusively extraneous, although it is in this part when we finally see Lucy Gray take some real control. To be fair, she is defiant from the start, even belting out a song the very moment she is chosen at the Reaping Ceremony—a scene that would have come across as a lot more stupid if not for Zegler’s beautiful voice. This never makes her any less helpless and dependent on Snow any time she’s in the arena. And by the time this movie all but declares Lucy’s ultimate fate a total mystery, it’s too late for it to matter much.

If anything makes The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes watchable, it’s the cast. This includes Jason Schwartzman, amusingly smarmy as the Hunger Games’s first televised host; Peter Dinklage as the slightly drunken Dean of the Academy; Viola Davis as the deliciously nefarious head gamemaker; and even Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer as Coriolanus’s cousin. (The casting of a trans actor in a part never identified as such is maybe the one truly progressive part of this production, and it was really great to see her here.)

In other words, due in no small part to the performances, I found myself entertained by this, the fifth film in the Hunger Games franchise. I’m tempted to say I enjoyed even more than The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, but that may be just because this time it’s been so long since I’ve seen one of these movies. The truth is, it’s more of the same but with different characters and actors. Which is . . . fine. Like that last drink you didn’t need but won’t hurt.

*Try watching through rose colored glasses.*

Overall: B-