Very good, but not great

Rating: 8/10 (29 March 2012)

First of all, I will say that I'm a 42 yr old woman, and my daughter had to practically force me to read the books. But once I got started, I couldn't put them down! With that said, I went into the movie with high hopes and moderate expectations, and didn't really leave disappointed. The movie was very well done, and covered most of the really important parts of the book. And I've read several reviews where people have complained about Rue's death....I actually thought it was handled very well, and was very much in line with the book. However, there were some things that I think should/could have been better.
1) If you haven't read the books, you're probably going to leave confused. They didn't do a very good job of giving you the background story, and didn't really allow much time for the relationship between Gale and Katniss to be seen. 2) They totally screwed up how Katniss came to have the Mockingjay pin. I don't know why they did this, as anyone who has read the books knows that this is KIND OF important later on. 3) Nothing at all was mentioned about Katniss's mother's healing services or of the book that Katniss and her parents have. This is also kind of important later on, so I felt like they should have at least mentioned it. 4) I wish they would have spent more time developing the relationship between Katniss and Rue, to explain why she was so distraught when Rue was killed. They also didn't show Rue explaining to Katniss about the berries, which again, was kind of important. 5) Would have liked to see more of Cinna and his team. 6) They REALLY screwed up the muttations at the end.......what happened to them being engineered with the dead tributes features?
I did think the casting was very well done,and really liked how they showed more of the inner workings of the game center. They did a very good job showing the excess and lack of reality from the citizens in the Capital. And the violence was nothing at all like what I thought it would be. Yes, this is a dark film with dark subjects. It is NOT for tender hearted youngsters or adults who are too sensitive. But it DOES shed a grim light on the true conditions of our country as it is, and shows the dangers we face if we don't correct our course.