The first sequel is already one too many

Rating: 4/10 (21 June 2017)

This is "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire", the biggest box office success from the year 2013 (five years old next year) and the second of four films from the Hunger Games franchise. Even if it did not get in at the Oscars for anything, it managed a pretty decent deal of awards attention, including a Golden Globe nomination for the British band Coldplay. The director is Francis Lawrence, a prolific and successful music video director, and he returned for films 3 and 4 as well. The script is by the Oscar-winning writers from "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Slumdog Millionaire". But given these names and their successes, the screenplay is quite a disappointment. I must say I have not read the books here or seen Battle Royale that many compare it to, but as a creative achievement the movie comes incredibly short. While running incredibly long as this film almost makes it to the 2.5-hour mark. And in the center of it all is young American actress Jennifer Lawrence, who reprises her role as Katniss Everdeen. I must say I enjoyed the first film a lot, but I still felt that her casting was a gigantic error that kept the franchise from becoming something special. Then again, I do not like Lawrence in anything really I have seen her in and this certainly also includes her Oscar-winning performance. Incredibly overrated actress and the world finally starts beginning to see. She is a poor man's Renée Zellweger at best and Zellweger herself is pretty limited too.
Back to this film here, the good thing is that Lawrence does not show one face expression as usual, but maybe 2 or 3, which is still not very much for a 2.5-hour film. But as bad as she may be, the script is even worse. Subtlety is a complete stranger to the writers here and the argument that the world the characters live in lacks subtlety altogether is not a valid explanation. It is fun though how the film tries to be as shocking as possible with one demonstrator being shot in the head early on, but the curtain closes right before we see it, so they can still get these 13-year-olds into theaters. Besides that, there is not much to the characters in here. Talented actors like Harrelson, Tucci, PSH (rip) and Edgerton are pretty much wasted because they would take away too much attention from Miss Lawrence. One third into the film, the writers apparently realized that they had no more material/ideas to elaborate convincingly on the aftermath of the first film anymore, so what do they do? That's right! Let's just have another Hunger Games edition right now. Who cares if this turns into a repetitive uncreative version of the first film then. And that's what it does. Apart from the fact that the rest of the film looked a lot like an episode of Survival Island with some (not so) special sci-fi effects added to it. It's basically nothing here but showing us how courageous, headstrong, yet vulnerable Lawrence's character is while the actress does not have 10% of the talent to make it look credible.
Finally, the last shot with Lawrence looking straight into the camera makes obvious that there will be a third film because the ending is on a cliffhanger and Lawrence and Lawrence would return for another installment. This is really disappointing, but what can you expect and can you really blame them with millions of people heading to cinemas despite the abysmal quality at times in this film. There is nothing refreshing or new in here and attention to detail or even love for movies and cinema is something I did not see in here at all. The occasionally entertaining moments of the supporting cast (especially the once again unrecognizable Tucci) just cannot make up for all the lengths and everything that is wrong with this film. I very much recommend you not to watch it.