Badly directed with poor dialogue.

Rating: 5/10 (25 November 2013)

I went to see this movie after seeing that in IMDb, it got a rating of 8.3 out of 10. Even though I saw some bad reviews about it, I was certain that a movie that got such a high rating in this kind of site must have something to offer. My god was I wrong. Where do I begin?
Dialogue is poorly written and awkward at times. For example, when Peeta finds a pearl in the clam he just tells Katniss "For you" or something, and she replies with "Thanks" and takes the pearl. Wow. Just wow. What was the screenwriter or whoever writes that thing thinking? I honestly started laughing when I heard these lines.
Screen time is wasted and an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, almost nothing happened and I started drifting away, something that has never happened in the first movie which I saw like three times. They did switch directors from the first movie, and it shows.
Unlike the previous Hunger Games, the sequel is plain boring, even in its most action-packed scenes, such as the toxic fog and the part where Peeta dies. So they manage to get past the fog and Peeta lives. Wooh, a twist! Everything that happens is so damn predictable and just uninteresting. Since over an hour passed until the games actually start, we don't get a chance to bond with the other tributes, and we just don't care about anyone except Katniss and Peeta. The part where the old lady runs into the fog in order to "save the others" could be much more emotional for the viewer if we only cared about her!
Also, ending a movie with a cliffhanger like this is just frustrating and plain lazy. This is something you can do in a TV series, where you get to see the resolution in the next episode in a week, but when done in a movie, it is clearly a way to force us viewers to watch the next sequel in order to get a satisfying resolution and cash-in on the way. In short, the ending is disappointing and doesn't resolve anything that happened so far. Did I just pay a full price for a prequel to when the story really kicks in to action?
I can go on and on about other things, such as the poor decision-making done by some of the characters (The bare-chested tribute knifing down the genius' wife while exposing himself to Katniss shooting him in the chest) or the stereotypical depiction of soldiers being sadistic, ruthless and unmerciful like robots instead of showing some small shred of humanity. I mean seriously, the Nazis weren't this cruel.
However, there are some good sides to this movie. Jennifer Lawrence acts wonderfully and does try to express some of Katniss' feelings. She does a great job. Josh Hutcherson gives a decent performance as well, playing the confused-from-love-and-fame Peeta. Other side-characters are depicted very well, and the overall acting in this film is superb.
Here and there there are some stronger scenes that save the movie from being a total bore, such as the fight against the baboons and Katniss and Peeta's first speech which was wonderfully acted.
Overall, this is a 5. There are some bright spots here and there in this movie, but they are just outweighed by the general boredom and heaviness of the rest of the film, and I found myself not giving a damn about nearly anything that happened on screen. Great acting and some strong scenes are burdened by poor dialogue and weak directing.
And that's pretty much it. I can't believe that this movie is believed to be one of 2013's best movies.