An artistically bereft, uninvolving POS

Rating: 3/10 (3 November 2015)

This movie is nigh unwatchable. You would think after circa 6 hours of screen time and a decades-old classic to lean back on, Jackson would have been able to inculcate some kind of attachment to these characters. You would be dead wrong. I defy you to care about a single character on screen, from the deeply irritating original invention Alfrid, to the utterly wasted and ill-defined Bilbo, to the very tired Ian McKellen (I refuse to call him Gandalf, because entirely gone is the mischievous spark that defined the character in LOTR). It is abundantly clear that LOTR was good in spite of Peter Jackson, and every moment of distracting ridiculousness and over the top, mind-numbing excess betrayed his true impulse as a filmmaker.
If you must see this movie, watch the Extended Edition with the fast-forward button handy - there's about 10-minutes of delightfully ludicrous and gruesome action in there that was cut from the Theatrical Edition and ranks among Jackson's most entertaining spectacle. Beyond that, avoid at all costs.