I enjoyed it. But I'm young.

Rating: 7/10 (25 March 2012)

I had read the books, and had fairly high expectations. Watched every sneak peek, interview, trailer, spoiler. But I would give it a good 7,just for a couple reasons. I definitely think they did an absolutely amazing job at the casting. Amazing. Gale was exactly what I expected. He had the looks, the voice, and the charisma I was expecting. Katniss was perfect in my mind, just like Jennifer Lawrence. She definitely had the characteristics I wanted to see in whoever was taking this large role. She had the eyes that you could see in every scene what she felt about it. In the book, it talked about she felt for Peeta, and she can't obviously just blurt it out. She is such an accomplished actress for so young and inexperienced. Peeta was played by one of my favorite actors, but I honestly and almost regrettably have to say that I didn't picture him as Josh Hutcherson. He didn't fit the whole "Lover Boy" status I had depicted in my mind. President Snow, Cinna, Caesar Flickerman; amazing job.
There were some scenes in the movie that were not satisfactory to me. Well they did the scenes the right way, but they didn't have a good time balance on the important scenes. I understand that you have to make some scenes longer so if you hadn't read the books, then you could understand. But they spent over the first half just in the training. The Book is called The Hunger Games not The Hunger Games training. The Games are the main part of the book, and seem to be overlooked by how much time was spent on that section of the movie.
I just think they should have gone more in depth into the characters. In the book, the unforgettable Cave Scene took up almost 100 pages. You really could see Katniss' and Peeta's characters almost melding together. You watched them get closer mentally, emotionally, and physically. She completely was his full service nurse to bringing him back from almost dead. She starts up this whole romance angle real well in the book. But in the movie, it's condensed into literally 10 minutes. They only kissed about 3 times in the whole movie, and in the book, just about 2 pages after the first kiss happened it states, "...takes an hour of coaxing, begging, threatening, and yes, kissing..." So she was off and on kissing him for an hour, just in that one hour blurb, and literally they included that side of the romance, twice?
And he isn't dying. Peeta has a bone-deep sword wound in his thigh, He is definitely in a lot of pain, don't get me wrong, but the movie didn't portray the urgency of the situation they were in. When Katniss had to go to the Cornucopia to get his medicine, they didn't explain that it was Blood poisoning that could be the cause of his death in literally the next 24 hours. The medicine cured his wound overnight, while in the book it wasn't this quickly and he wasn't out of his misery yet.
Cudos to whatever review I read this off of, but literally, if they would have added 20 minutes to the movie, it could have easily captured the emotional depth that happened between Katniss and Rue, Katniss and Peeta, Katniss and Haymitch. Literally 20 minutes.
And if somebody told me that the guy that decided to move the camera around so much was not mentally sane, I wouldn't doubt it in a second.