Still dwarfed

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2014)

The Battle of the Five Armies hides a decent fantasy blockbuster somewhere inside it, but director Peter Jackson drowns it beneath clunky set-pieces and bloat, tossing in every Middle-earth thing not nailed down by the Tolkien Estate and adding his own romantic fan fiction, to boot. It's a wonder we don't get a scene with a pony-riding Tom Bombadil fighting Morgoth, and the pony is ON FIRE.
The cast is blameless. Freeman is fine as Bilbo and so is Armitage as tragic hero Thorin. Everyone else is at least adequate. Unfortunately, the movie hammers their performances with a noisy score (whatever Jackson developed must be contagious, as the once brilliant Howard Shore got it too) and unnecessary special effects (nuclear Galadriel! dragon-sick Thorin!).
There are some grace notes here and there: a fine prologue with Bard facing the dragon Smaug in a burning Esgaroth had me giddy and quite fooled for a while - although Bilbo doesn't indirectly inform the archer of Smaug's vulnerable point, which was thematically significant in the book.
Sadly, there are plenty of cringe-worthy moments as well; cut every Tauriel, Legolas and Alfrid scene (thankfully, Radagast is barely there) and about 30% of the action (conservative estimate) and the film would improve considerably.
Like George Lucas before him, Jackson succumbs to set-pieces onanism. If the hero fights five enemies on a tower, it's exciting; if he fights fifty and he uses CGI-enhanced ninja moves and the tower is collapsing under a meteor shower, it's numbing: viewers stop feeling tension and mentally check out.
Here, Galadriel banishes Sauron using a garish spell (wasn't that her evil/tempted form? and the one thing from the Fellowship I didn't need to see again); Beorn jumps from an eagle and morphs into a bear in mid-air; Dain headbutts armored orcs and rides a pig...
... and Legolas? It's better not to even MENTION Legolas. He was already an avatar for Jackson's worst instincts in the original trilogy; here, the cheesy stuntman has googled the cheat codes. The one moment of clever, effective restraint - Thorin letting Azog fall in a frozen lake - is spoiled by its horror movie coda.
The Battle of The Five Armies is the cinematic equivalent of ordering a coffee and having it delivered after twenty minutes with avocado marmalade and gummy bears by a hollering clown on a monocycle: you get your coffee, but also an major headache. And you wonder: why?
The lean beauty of The Fellowship of the Ring seems like a hundred years ago.
5/10