Best book adaptation since the first Harry Potter!

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2012)

I read the series and have fallen in love and obsessed over them, so when I went to the movies to see this, I had high expectations. And it did not fail. Sure there are some differences, but you can't exactly fit a everything in a 400 something page book into a 1 and a half hour movie. The casting was phenomenal and the set was stupendous. I can not wait for Catching Fire! I think that the production team did a great job. Jennifer Lawrence was the best choice for Katniss and Josh Hutcherson as Peeta was an amazing choice, and he did a fantastic job. I believe Rue was also magnificently cast, as was Alexander Ludwig as Cato. I am glad they chose some lesser known actors for the parts and not major Hollywood stars, because this movie was not meant to be a star studded Expendables type action film, but it was made for the book lovers and true Mockingjay fans. They left out some important parts, but they made it as close as they could to the series and did great. If you are looking for a If you h action film with great acting, then this is the movie for you. The relationships between the characters were well established, especially between Katniss and Cinna and Katniss and Peeta. Jennifer does a great job portraying Katniss's emotions to the audience and letting us get to know her as a detailed, emotional character. If you have not yet seen this movie or read the books, I highly recommend them. They will not let you down. If you are a fan of Harry Potter than this is definitely a must see for you. Not only does it have great acting, but we can actually see the characters grow throughout the movie and gain respect and feelings towards one another. The book and movie are extremely close and of curse the books are always better than the movies. There is no way to completely transform The Hunger Games novel into a movie due to the immense details in the book, but this movie is definitely the closest anyone can get to capturing the wonderful book into the time allotted for the movie. Hopefully people enjoy it as much as I do and fall in love with it enough to go out and buy the series that everyone is calling the greatest series ever written, and rightly so. This movie and the cast and crew deserve more credit and praise for their amazing work.... a job well done! My only problem is I wish that they had established more into detail the districts and which one does which. Also, I was disappointed that they l left out Madge but I guess they didn't have time for such a small character and felt that they could cut her character out to save time and avoid having to establish the importance of yet another character.