RANT - The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1

The clumsiest title of the year is dampened still further by the absence of anything that could be described as action, or excitement, or drama.

I'd been determined to avoid this film ever since the trailers started a few months ago, but when your wife suggests every couple of days that you should take her, and after ignoring those suggestions a few times she says she'll find someone else to go with her, you've just got to knuckle down and go.

But even she said as we trudged out of the theater, "that was a bit dull, wasn't it?" I bit my tongue and waited until we were in the car before I uttered the predictable - but very accurate - "I told you so".

In fact, I told her so after the first, and the second installments of this by the numbers series of movies.

While Stanley Tucci's Hunger Games TV host is a reprehensibly over the top character, several members of the cast have that vacant, "Go on, slap me!" look, with Josh Hutcherson / Peeta Mellark at the front of that line.

For me, 90 minutes would be infinitely better spent watching that slap-fest rather than another freaking Hunger Games movie.