Another groan-inducing pathetic money-grab typical of Hollywood

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2012)

This was a terrible, boring movie with all the awful comic relief, one-liners, and cartoonish, over-the-top retarded action typical of brain-dead Hollywood blockbuster garbage. The magic of the original trilogy is gone, replaced by Phantom Menace stupidity. This is a movie not even worth watching once, except for the only highlight, which is the riddling contest between Bilbo and Gollum--the rest of the movie is pointless drivel.
I almost fell asleep so many times only to open my eyes to yet another groan-inducing action scene or musical number. The Goblin King looks like Jar-Jar Binks on acid with a skin condition and goiter and about as much intelligence and personality. The three trolls behave like the Three Stooges. You only see Smaug the dragon for a few seconds and the Necromancer for less than that. Radagast the Brown is a crazy magic mushroom-tripping wizard with bird-poop running down his face and crusted to his beard who drives a magic sled pulled by giant bunny rabbits. Retarded!!! Hated all the new annoying characters except the main dwarfs (Thorin, Balin, and Dwalin, IIRC). Bilbo didn't get to do much. Other characters (Elrond, Galadriel, Saruman, Frodo) have pointless cameos and add zero to the story, just drag the unendurable running time out even further. There's some lame attempt to connect this story to the Lord of the Rings, but that amounts to a couple lines in a boring round-table conversation between the cameo cast.
Despite all the stupid action, nobody on the team ever dies or is in any real danger as they get saved at the last minute by Gandalf every time things don't go their way. So there's zero suspense. The action is so impossible to believe at times that it makes most cartoons look realistic by comparison. I suppose it's better than the god-awful Phantom Menace (which also only had one cool scene with Darth Maul's fight), but not by much. It feels like a parody of the original LotR trilogy. Shame on everyone involved for drinking the Kool Aid and signing off on this pathetic money-grab.