Contrived and Boring

Rating: 4/10 (22 December 2013)

Maybe I just didn't get "it" but I had a terrible time watching this movie in the theatres. Every step of the way, I wasn't feeling what was going on. No one's motivations made a lot of sense. The movie just plods along, feeling fake and contrived the whole way.
About Jennifer Lawrence: I don't get why she was chosen to star in these movies. Sorry, she's just not leading-actress material. She has these cold dead eyes, when she gets emotional it's not convincing at all.
Everyone is weirdly passive about their horribly oppressive situation full of crushing poverty, slavery, and starvation. As much as I try to suspend disbelief, the whole Hunger Games universe doesn't make sense at a gut level.
And what's with the weird emphasis on dresses and whether they are on fire? People in the movie act like the fate of the world depends on whether Katniss's dresses are pretty enough. The ooh-ing and aahhh-ing over fiery dresses is so cheesy, reminds me of Twilight with its sparkly vampires. There's this emphasis on superficial crap like giving speeches and going on TV that makes it seem like the writer has some strange warped girlish views on the way the world works. As if the fate of the revolution would depend on gossip about stuff like celebrity weddings and pregnancies. What the heck?
When the movie started getting more action-oriented at first I hoped it would be more interesting, but even the action sequences were a drag. It just felt like they were filling time as they kept throwing all these contrived traps at the contestants.
Then the movie just ends all of a sudden. This is one of the worst movies I've seen in the theaters for a while. I do not recommend it at all.