Read the book

Rating: 6/10 (3 December 2014)

Six, an appropriate score for a B action movie with no significance, plot or character development. I'm sorry if you liked Finnick Odair, because don't expect to see much of him, or Peeta Mellark, but the major problem with this movie is that it's telling the opposite story of the one the book told. All the foreshadowing is removed and there are newly invented scenes that directly contradict the subtext of the book and lead me to suspect that a radical change of ending at the end of movie two.
It's not Mockingjay, the book, made into a movie. It's like Coin made a propo of Mockingjay from her point of view and released it as a campaign ad for her upcoming presidential run.
Mockingjay wasn't a completely original story, it was Watership Down, but it was a wonderful end to the series, and just the sort of triple play that was needed. Now they've taken that away from me and handed me a star wars in its place. That's like taking away my swordfish steak and giving me a McFillet.
It's a chopped assortment of action scenes, with all of the darkness removed, and absurd scenes added that generated actual mocking laughter from the theater audience when I saw it on the second night. That's never a good sign.
Still, if you're just seeing it as a movie, it's not terrible, it's not like inception or some of the garbage they have at top of IMDb's list; meaning, it's not blatantly bad, it's just blatantly not mockingjay. Maybe if they called it mockingmockingjay, or maybe if it was a youtube fan video attempt it wouldn't have annoyed me so much.
There are a couple of well done scenes taken from the book that actually appear in the movie. I think there are actually five scenes in this movie that are actually in the book, and maybe two of them are the same as the book. What's more difficult to forgive is the creation of scenes that aren't in the book to add in when there is clearly so much that was hacked out.
So, if you didn't read the book, you'll be mildly annoyed, if you did read the book, just brace yourself with really low expectations and then you can still enjoy it.