An impressive vision, executed poorly

Rating: 5/10 (11 May 2015)

I owe The Hobbit (the book) a lot in the way of sparking my imagination as a child. It was a fantastic story of a little guy doing big things, having grand adventures, and seeing an impressive outside world.
When I heard Peter Jackson was going to do the Hobbit, I was both excited and nervous. As were many. When I heard he was splitting it into two parts, I thought 'okay, makes sense'. But when they announced they were going to split it into THREE parts, my heart sunk. I knew they would be stretching, an already rather short story, thin.
Sad to say, I believe I was right.
I wasn't overly impressed with the first installment, but very much enjoyed the second. I think mainly due to the City on The Lake and Bard's character/story being an interesting and engaging tale to tackle, and even found it more entertaining than the main story. That along side the brilliant Smaug, left me excited for the third film.
Battle of Five Armies starts off immediately after the finish of the second film... Which was the first of many, many problems. It felt horrendously out of place and absolutely should have been the end to the second movie.
From then on everything seemed very oddly put together. The event's didn't seem logically cohesive, and the film repeatedly left me wondering 'what the hell is the point in that?' The storytelling was easily the weakest of all the Middle Earth films. The editing was chaotic and poor. Unnecessary over the top CGI plagued otherwise brilliant make-up, costume and set pieces. And the dialogue/dramatic moments were borderline cringe worthy.
I get the feeling this particular film would have benefited greatly from being down scaled, with the focus being on the characters in the 'situation' rather than the situation itself.
The 'situation' of course being the battle of five armies. A disappointing mess of 'what the F%#k is going on?' which felt tired and re-used from previous LOTR films.
I understand that it was suppose to be an big epic finale to the series, but it came across severely rushed and so plot riddled that by the end you ask yourself 'Is that it?'
Overall the film seemed to focus on the wrong things. And more than often, totally unnecessary things. I still cannot for the life of me understand why Albert got as much wasted screen time as he did, since he brought nothing but eye-rolling 'humour' to the film.
I could go on forever about things that were wrong with the film, but to be honest, the things that were right, were few and far between. The acting, in spite of poorly written dialogue and characters, was on spot. Even the bizarre romance between Kili and Tauriel was played out well (considering their back story and reasons for falling in love were nil). The costumes and make up were fantastic (as always), and the score/ sound effects were wonderful.
There are so few moments where this film shines, and as far as entertainment go, it was rather banal. Also, I know Jackson copped a lot of criticism from the length of Return of the Kings ending, however this one felt far, far too rushed and anti-climatic.
So much potential wasted.