Pretty good job with this one

Rating: 7/10 (13 December 2014)

I read all three books of this series a few times. The first two were terrific, and no matter how many times I read the third book I just plain didn't like it. I didn't like the direction the story went, it lacked excitement and what made this series so interesting was completely missing.
I wasn't crazy about the first movie, the second one was vastly improved and this movie might have been the best adaptation of the book that I've seen yet. I can tell you that this movie was more interesting to me than the first half of the third book. I've been going to the theater with the same group of people for all of these movies and I expected this one to be really bad and it wasn't. It kept my attention, the acting was decent (except for Liam Hemsworth, I still fail to understand why he's allowed to be in movies) and it created some suspense that the book didn't have. Aspects of the book that seemed downright silly didn't appear that way in the movie. It gives the finale some hope, not that I wouldn't go see it anyway.
I give it an honest 7 out of 10 and I'm a pretty hard grader. It's worth going to see. It doesn't have the pizazz that Catching Fire did, but they're on the right track with this one. And a big reason it's not higher is because of the lack of material they had to work with. The last book in this series was really bad.