Good movie, but could have been better

Rating: 8/10 (10 August 2013)

As a movie, it remained faithful to the story, despite the changes for cinematic purposes, more-so than other book-to-movie adaptations.
However, despite following the book closely, the character development in the movie was lacking, especially for Peeta and Haymitch, despite great performances by Josh Hutcherson and Woody Harrelson. They captured the essence of their character perfectly, but weren't given much to work with.
Jennifer Lawrence was great as Katniss and her performance was very believable and not at all trite (say compared to the performances in Twilight). However, the character development of Katniss in the movie is different from the book. In the movie, she's very sullen and serious and almost cold, while in the book, she was also funny with a sarcastic, dry humor and she was less sure of what she is doing in the games.
AS for the screenplay, I did love the addition of Snow and Seneca Crane and the behind the scenes of the Games. However, despite following the chronology of the story closely, it missed a lot of the themes and messaging in the books. The screenplay merely depicted the Games as a horrible reality show, but never really showed the social justice issues tackled in the books. I think they missed a real good opportunity by not explaining the tessarae system more explicitly and they should have followed the books more closely on why the Capitol was forced to change the rules to allow TWO tributes from the same district to win. District 11 rioting didn't make much sense when young tributes have died in the games many times before.
Technically, the special effects and the shaky cam action were atrocious. The arena and District 12 scenery were good, but the world building of the Capitol was underwhelming. I would loved to have seen the futuristic technologies of the Capitol mentioned in the book on screen. In the first Harry Potter movie, the best thing about it was seeing Diagon Alley and Hogwarts come to life, and I hope for the same in this movie. The costumes were also sub-par. I think they spent all their costume budget on Effie, as she was the only one who looked and sounded like true Capitolite in the movie.