The Albatross In The Room ...

Rating: Null/10 (20 April 2015)

My summary above is what I feel should have been the proper title of the film. The Albatross being the character of Peeta, and the ridiculous focus on such a weakly written part which dragged this entire episode down, wasting a ton of surrounding talent in the process.
It's difficult to complain about the actor when the part of Peeta (and especially invoking that character for anything more than a fleeting love interest of a momentarily distracted teenage girl while being caught up in something of much larger concern), the most weakly scripted and seriously undercast element of the whole series to begin with, was actually made the focus of this film. I can't even tell if Peeta was supposed to be the "focus" of the film or not, but there's no question that anything to do with this character was a major distraction throughout. By any good sense of scripting, he was (or certainly should have been) conveniently gone before this latest episode. But, no ....
So we have at hand; Donald Sutherland, Jeffry Wright, Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and, oh yeah, Jennifer Lawrence in there too. But this whole episode had to play like a broken record around; Peeta. The fact that the producer/writer/director "club of cluelessness" had to rub it in our noses in the final scene didn't help at all.
Is anybody else's forehead as sore as mine as result of banging into the table or desk at such a complete waste? If you're going to write such a weak part, then get try to get someone who has at least a slight chance of being a future Colin Farrel or Ewan McGregor or somebody like that to play the part, if you are involving all this other talent. It's not like any other characters or scenarios in this movie involved anything like 'great script writing.' It's just for entertainment, we know that to start with. But you just can't have a guy made for soap operas or teen movies trying to keep up with the others in this movie in this scenario, in this inappropriate role.
Aside from the mis-casting, I just don't understand the author or script writers imposing this "teen love" aspect into the series beyond the first two episodes at all. There was nothing in the Catching Fire episode that convinced any audience there was any genuine 'love' from Katniss towards Peeta that was anything other than showing appreciation and taking pity. But now she's ready to drag down the entire revolution and its cause for sake of ... I don't know, you tell me.
A guy who would do OK in soap operas and secondary roles in standard sitcoms.
This "teen love" thing is just hard to explain, innit?