"It feels thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2015)

Bilbo's own words from The Lord of the Rings ring true when it comes to this movie, sadly.
My feelings for the final installment of The Hobbit can be summed up by imagining the following discussion around the script-writing table...
"So, we have Legolas fighting "Next-most-important-Orc (tm)" at the end and the bridge crumbles, and so we get Legolas to run up the falling masonry to safety? Anyone?"
"Wow! That sounds so cool. Let's do it!"
There you have it. That one scene sums up everything wrong with the movie. That they thought it was a good idea is forgivable. That they went ahead and included it in the final film after seeing how bad it looked is just as ludicrous as watching it unfold on the screen in front of you. The stones fall in seeming slow motion yet provide a firm footing for the lighter-than-air Legolas as he hops up them.
It is, by no means, the only awful example of CGI in the movie, but it is the most jarring.
I complained that, in the first movie, the dwarfs were essentially interchangeable and generic. That changed considerably in the second film, to my pleasure, but Oh dear! In this installment, the dwarfs get almost no character time at all with the exception of Thorin and Kili. Some of them don't even get lines to say!
It is a movie too far, frankly. Padded out with unnecessary CGI battles that serve little purpose. There are weird worm monsters that the orcs seek out like they are going to be the battle-winner for them, which then get five seconds of screen time before vanishing into the ground never to be seen again. They don't even contribute to the battle at all, for goodness' sake!
I didn't expect the gravity and seriousness of Lord of the Rings, but neither did I expect the buffoonery of Alfrid in this movie, or the dwarfs in the first film. I did expect the movie to be competently done but, to be honest, I doubt Jackson had that much to do as a director. Most of the movie is CGI battle scenes or choreographed fights. The few moments of character drama are few and far between here.
Another annoyance was just how heavy-handed Jackson was in connecting this film (and the previous two) with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A crazy fight scene with the Nazgul vs. Galadriel, Saruman and Elrond in Dol Guldur? Really? It's not like they even tried to be subtle about it. It's more like a hammer to the face saying "Look! It's Sauron! He's behind it all! There he is! See his Eye!" Honestly, even M Night couldn't manage this level of obvious, in-the-face, spamming.
As a theatrical release, I suppose it serves the popcorn brigade well enough, but as an addition to the Tolkien movie roster, it is weak. I can only hope the inevitable extended edition fills in the gaps and makes it a more rounded movie, because as it is, it is seriously square! In fact, there are a number of scenes currently in the theatrical release that I would not miss if they magically vanished in the extended cut. But then, I guess they'd have to call it the reduced cut and that would never sell!
SUMMARY: Weak last installment. Jackson suffers from the Lucas Syndrome when it comes to making prequels. The only good thing that can really be said about it is that, in the future, people will watch this trilogy before the LOTR and be amazed at how much better the latter is.