Why I Saw It: Guaranteed $150 Million opening, non-3D, Jennifer Lawrence. Try and stop me.
Cast: Isn't Jennifer Lawrence great? Fresh off an Oscar win she's bringing those talents to her return to franchise fare. It's hard to say how good the material for Katniss is on the page because J-Law nails it regardless. Josh Hucherson is better than I remember him being in the first movie. He's more of his own character. Woody Harrelson (Haymitch) seemed more engaged this time and Elizabeth Banks (Effie) proved to be a much deeper character than I expected after coming off as little more than a cartoon in the first. As for new faces, Sam Claflin (Finnick) has the demeanor and look of a former Hunger Games victor. He still has a generic white guy look, which is why I don't remember him from anything he's been in. I'm so happy to see Jena Malone show up in this. I don't recall ever disliking her in something although I didn't find her character to be fully realized here. Philip Seymour Hoffman gets good use out of his few scenes. I assume he'll have more to do in future movie(s). There's others I'm forgetting. For a 2.5 hour movie, this was still overstuffed with cast.
Plot: Half the movie is about something I couldn't be less interested in. We did the Hunger Games thing in the first movie. It was a good hook for the first movie. It sets up the world effectively and allows for a self contained story. You couldn't ask for a better setup to a franchise. That's been done. There's a lot about the world, the rebellion that I care about. Doing another Hunger Games is a boring way to go and an example of why most people have issues with sequels: redoing the first movie but bigger is not interesting. That said, they nail everything happening outside the games. The beginning of the movie does a great job showing the unrest and fallout from Katniss' actions in her first games. The Hunger Games part was very well done. Had it been the first time we saw this, I'd fully enjoy it, no caveats. I'm not sure how much of the end I should talk about but let's say I was very pleased with everything it revealed about the games and the Volunteers from the districts.
Elephant in the Room: It sounds like your problems are with the book, not the movie. Absolutely. I should've started with that. I don't know all the details of the book vs. movie but as far as I can tell, the movie took mediocre lemons and made delicious lemonade. Had the second book been about something other than another Hunger Games and been just as good then I wouldn't worry about the third book/movie. Instead, all the second book/movie has proven is that they can tell a really good story about a battle royale. I'm a little worried about where it goes from here.
To Sum Things Up:
I feel better about this movie than I do about the series going forward. Ignoring the franchise and focusing on the movie, this was a very good blockbuster movie. It is edge of your seat exciting, filled with a variety of characters and better than expected performances. It's redundant at this point to say it but Jennifer Lawrence is as strong a lead as you are going to find. It looks like this is going to have the 4th highest opening of all time, so most of this is pointless because you've already seen it, but I could not be more pleased with this as a second movie for the franchise.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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