Everyone’s best mate Jennifer Lawrence is back in the not much hyped sequel to The Hunger Games, which I am sure no one knows about because the internet never mentions her. She’s back home now having survived the last Games and has heaps of money and her family is safe, but is still mopey and has nightmares about killing people. Which is fair, I guess. She likes a Hemsworth but poor baker boy Peeta still pines after her but when she gets hot and sweaty she can’t decide whose arrow she wants in her quiver, but thankfully the filmmakers realised the story is less about teenage moistness and more talkin’ bout a revolution. Creepy president Donald Sutherland hates that the poor people might ruin his riveting life of champagne and white rose gardens so he goes about trying to quash Jen’s firebird soul, because the other poor people are treating her like a war messiah because SHE IS THE MOCKINGJAY and will lead them to an uprising because frankly totalitarianism is really unbecoming.

All the grandiose bourgeois are back in the Capitol and they’re hilarious and Elizabeth Banks wears butterflies and Lenny Kravitz again adorns gold glitter to his sexy, lazy eyes and there is a drink that these people drink that makes them throw up so they can eat more. They probably had to invent it because their decorated fingernails were shredding their delicate throats and how could they go on blowing each other all day long with such tender mouth holes?

The Games happen again and poor Jen is dragged back in with baker boy and they make friends this time (including the up-yours Jena Malone who has zero fucks to give and walks around stripping in elevators and flipping the bird) and hang out in a really pretty island getaway. They all get sweaty, stressed and sexy but before they can all rip off their wetsuits and hunger games each other’s private parts they are attacked by poison gas and angry monkeys and whatever else fake nature can throw at them.

I was so glad the people behind this film decided to let us watch the film. The first Hunger Games completely rode off the talent of the cast and the story because the whole thing was shot like the director was angrily jerking off the DOP so that every shot was just incomprehensible enough. I think there was fighting but honestly I can’t be sure. Someone smartly took the author of the books off screenplay duties because she is a novelist not a screenwriter and hired actual screenwriters that know what they’re doing and actually got a script that flows and makes sense. I can forgive director Francis Lawrence for making the dump-worthy Water For Elephants because Catching Fire is like whiskey in my mouth, and I don’t refer to a lot of films as good booze.

#H