Very good - with one exception

Rating: 8/10 (1 June 2015)

And this exception would be Miss Jennifer Lawrence, who is just so less talented than media and filmmakers want us to believe. I wish they would have chosen Carey Mulligan or Hailee Steinfeld to carry this franchise, but sadly they did not. Instead they choose the obvious pick, who managed, in this film, to basically show zero authentic facial emotion during almost 150 minutes and is also not gifted as a physical actress. The script is actually pretty excellent except in these situations when it is not about telling a great story (regardless of how new it is), but attempts to give Lawrence's character scenes as baity as possible, which she doesn't nail a single one of with her usual aggressive approach to acting that is bar any subtlety. Thankfully, Woody Harrelson and especially Stanley Tucci make the film also worth a watch from the acting perspective. Some of Lawrence's worst scenes include the one where she acts embarrassingly like a mother to her sister, when her sister calls her mother before, or the scene where Hutcherson confesses his love (or better-said Lawrence's reaction afterward) or the scene near the end she says "it's the finale" or the apple scene. Basically, she really messed up all the emotional moments this film had, not only the ones I mentioned before, also everything on racism and friendship.
This movie was number 3 in terms of commercial success in 2012 (following the Avengers and Batman) and was written (adapted from a novel of course) and directed by Gary Ross ("Pleasantville"). He did not return for the sequels, which is a bit of a shame as you cannot really blame him for his lead actress' lack of talent. His writing was top-notch for the most part. The whole idea of the current generation paying for the errors of the past generations is not entirely new, but it's still relevant and was smartly executed here. All in all, this was a great film in the first half and a good film in the second half. This decrease in quality obviously also had to do with Lawrence. Surprisingly, everything surreal surrounding the Hunger Games and the detailed introduction to them was far more interesting than actually watching them. The ending of the film was partially expected of course, but not entirely and that was nicely done too. As a whole, it's a very witty well-done film and I recommend watching it.