The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence, 2013)

The director may have changed for the second instalment, but it's more of the same with Katniss Everdeen forced once again into the arena to fight for her life by the fascist authorities. The first part of the lengthy film does make an attempt to flesh out the regulation dystopia as the two leads find themselves puppets of the state, but it's at a strictly cartoon level, with the villainy impossibly evil and the heroine every teenage girl's wish-fulfilment fantasy, one moment sporting fabulous dresses and stealing the gala and the next slaying men left, right and centre with her inexhaustible supply of arrows. At least the likes of Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Woody Harrelson are present in the wings to provide some interest for adult viewer too.

5/10