Epic entertainment!

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 2016)

The final installment in Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" trilogy is two and a half hours of non-stop action without any real plot points of character focus. That's why it works. Peter Jackson knows what kind of audience he hit with this trilogy adapted from a single 250 page book. He's reaching the "popcorn" audience who just want to have fun and be visually arrested for a bit. Bilbo and Company are forced to engage in a war against an array of combatants and keep the Lonely Mountain from falling into the hands of a rising darkness, leading into non-stop action sequences. This film has gorgeous CGI and wonderful visuals that embrace everything about this type of fantasy. While it doesn't have the beauty or complexity of the visuals in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, it does have more fun and more ridiculous action to keep you consistently entertained from start to finish. Starting with a dragon attack, ending with the last orc kill, "The Battle of the Five Armies" is a joy to watch even though there's way more than five armies and even though this could have been the last twenty minuets of a stand alone hobbit film.