Just came back from watching this film and enjoying it. Disagreed with the majority of Bob's points. (Spoiler warning.)
First off, regarding the criticism that there's all this build-up for new, deadlier characters to duke it out, only for them to die off screen: having the focus in the arena be on Katniss taking these people out one by one goes against the entire theme of the narrative. The majority of the tributes this time around are friends with each other. The theme deals with unity among the oppressed. This time the arena is responsible for killing most of the tributes because, again, it coincides with the prevailing "remember who the real enemy is" idea. So yeah, if all the tributes are murdering each other on screen in a crazy, bloody frenzy, that theme is totally ruined.
Instead, the tension relies on schemes going on behind the scenes. The Games this time around are advertised as a battle between a group of all-stars from previous Games, but in reality they're basically a bunch of screwed up people who are forced again into scrabbling to survive. So they band together and fight the system. Sorry Bob didn't get his Mortal Kombat, but the story aims for something different. He is also more or less blatantly lying when he says "all of those fun new characters get killed off screen." No they don't. A few of them do, but a couple of them die on screen, and a few of them join the "improve team" and end up being (in my opinion) entertaining and interesting with the screen time they're afforded.
Second, calling Katniss weak at the beginning of the film because she cries and has breakdowns is? questionable. The implication is that every person who goes in the arena and manages to survive is left scarred and with varying degrees of PTSD. If a soldier in some story who comes back from a war ? after being forced to kill people and see their friends die in horrible ways ? no one is going call them weak for having nightmares or breakdowns over it. And this soldier is an adult, so if you put a kid into a similar situation, of course it's going to screw with their heads, no matter how "badass" they happen to be.
Third, the absurd makeup and dress functions more as a metaphor for how a prevailing culture can influence certain aspects of someone's life. The moral gray comes from characters like Effie, who ? despite appearing like the other bad guys ? is shown to have a conscience, because she's exposed firsthand to the plights of her poorer counterparts, unlike the other capital citizens. I agree it's not overly strong as symbolic material goes, but it's at least a bit more subtle than he's giving it credit for.
Fourth, all of that "sitting around wasting time" is spent with the group surviving together and dealing with various death traps, and it all more or less centers around getting to know these new characters when they're not fighting for their lives. In the meantime, Katniss struggles with whether they can be trusted or not. It all builds up to a moment where Katniss has an opportunity to off one of them, but decides not to even though it would appear that she was betrayed.
This is clear tl;dr now, but I think that covers most of the gripes he had.