First, let's get a few things out of the way that I really didn't like all that much, starting with the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale. It dragged on far too long in my opinion, with the back-and-forth, will-they-won't-they, until it was getting rather annoying. And faintly reminiscent of the aforementioned Twilight. Also, I know that you have to willfully suspend your disbelief with these sorts of films but can I just say that, if the Panem government was truly interested in keeping a lid on things, the Hunger Games would seem to me to be ridiculously counterproductive. Forcing, for example, twelve year old girls to "fight" against 18 year old boys (aka literally get slaughtered) for the amusement of the elites is the most surefire method I can think of to cause rage-fueled uprisings. Likewise, the choices of weapons seem a bit silly by time... I mean, I can see using a bow and arrow when you live in an impoverished Appalachian village and nothing else is available, but is it really the most sensible weapon in the Games? I suppose one could argue that in later movies, where Katniss has become the promotional face of the rebellion, the bow is part of her carefully crafted image. But how about that guy- Finnick- with the trident thing? I mean, really- you're going into battle against hordes of people trying to kill you and your weapon of choice is a trident? Perhaps there're reasons for these things given in the books, but these hardly seem like sensible decisions.
Having not read the series, I can't say how well the film is cast regarding the similarities between the book character and their film adaption counterparts, but I thought most of the actors played their parts competently if not brilliantly. I can't say that I was a particular fan of Donald Sutherland as President Snow, but this may just be my personal dislike for his acting style. I don't have much good to say about the Kiera Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice, and near the top of my list of irritants is the seriously miscast Sutherland as Mr. Bennett, whom he portrayed as a doddering old fool. Of course, it's possible that Sutherland plays Snow as he's written in the novels... and, now that I think on it, he's not really a bad choice for playing a leader-for-life who wallows in luxury with a privileged few while everyone else lives in poverty on meagre government handouts, given his Communist sympathies. Sutherland was palling around (and sleeping) with Hanoi Jane in her "Let's kiss up to the North Vietnamese" stage. The first thing I ever saw him in was an adoring biopic about Norman Bethune (Sutherland was Bethune) the Canadian doctor who was so impressed by the wonders of Stalin's USSR when he visited in 1935 that he became an avowed communist himself, eventually moving to China to practice medicine. When Bethune died, Mao wrote his eulogy. But I digress.
There were also things- and characters- in the four movies that I enjoyed, and I will discuss these in Part II of this review, as well as give a ranking of the films in order of my liking of them.