Interesting but too much deviation & CGI

Rating: 5/10 (23 December 2012)

The Lord of the Rings movies were so fantastic that I was willing to overlook a few invented scenes. The Hobbit strays much further from Tolkien's text; greatly overdramatizes many action scenes just because CGI enables it; and has too many corny-joke moments in what should be a sober tale.
Part of my rating is also because it's absurd to turn The Hobbit into three films. Two would have been pushing it. Naked greed is a black mark against this series.
It's a diverting film, but with all the alterations, it's just another fantasy spectacular. If it had really been The Hobbit (in fact and in spirit), I'd have rated it far higher.