Terrible

Rating: 3/10 (9 September 2012)

How in the world was this movie so widely praised? This movie sucks. The acting is terrible, the idea is really not even that creative or original, and the storytelling is beyond awful.
I didn't read the book and I feel like you had to read the books in order to understand this movie. For example, the movie does absolutely nothing to explain why these hunger games are being carried out. This movie does nothing to explain who each of the characters are. This movie continually mentions the importance of sponsors and the importance of achieving a high fight rank/score, yet there is absolutely no explanation given as to what the sponsors or what the fight rank do. This movie does nothing to really do much of anything in filling us in on what we're watching.
The quality of the sets, special effects, and costumes was bordering on embarrassing. I felt like I was watching a Star Trek episode where Jean Luc Picard goes down to one of the alien planets and interacts with various people. Other comparable quality comparisons: Xena Warrior Princess, Power Rangers, and Smallville. In other words, the movie looked like it was using television special effects, set designs, and costumes.
There is one scene where the lead is being driven in on a chariot with fire and everyone is freaking out. That was the cheesiest/weakest fire chariots I could imagine. It was almost like the producers were presented with this sort of choice: Option 1, Bad ass, real-looking fire chariot, or Option 2, pretty sweet fire chariot, or Option 3, awful/terrible chariot but we'll save some money...and the producers go, "We'll take option 3" This sums up the entire movie--> it looks and feels cheap and like the producers were trying to make this for the lowest possible amount of money.
Other bad parts of the movie: (1) The love story: they try to force a love story between the two leads yet I found myself being disgusted by the love story because the lead character is cheating on her at-home boyfriend. Lame. It make me hate both of the leads. Also the chemistry between these two was like a lukewarm bowl of unsalted Matzo ball soup; the romance was totally forced and was like a piece of cardboard; (2) the length--> this is a two-and-a-half-hour movie and it didn't need to be longer than an hour and a half. Nothing happened...the scenes were long and drawn out for no reason; (3)the fighting--> beyond cheap...no sense of darkness, no sense of aloneness, no sense of desperation. The movie was too DisneyLike, totally killed the realism and reality of what it would be like to fight in a death match; (4) the fact that the game makers changed the rules to create suspense and then changed the rules back to create more suspense. Yet, no suspense was created. The decisions were done within seconds and there was no emotion freak out by the actors...it was just a matter of, "oh okay so we have to kill each other, well we don't want to so we'll kill ourselves." and then the game warden jumps in.
Overall, the movie was sloppy, poor executed, had terrible acting, and was essentially a failure at every single point of the movie. This movie just goes to show you that talent/skill are not required to make it big in show business.