A Cheap Hollywood Cash Grab Mangles a Classic

Rating: 2/10 (17 October 2015)

Some good actors are working hard in this movie, but they can't save it from what it is: a badly executed cash grab that has nothing to do with The Hobbit and a lot to do with a bunch of people in Hollywood trying to milk the public for as much money as possible.
I wanted to like the movie, and tried to be forgiving. But it's mediocre, mechanical, and boring.
They should have done less and done it better.
You can stop now, or you can read ahead for a laugh.
. . . (one very mild spoiler ahead)
BAD WRITING
It's so far off the original story that there's nothing left but mass-produced Hollywood fabrication. (maybe that's what happens when you take a short novel and turn it into 3 full length cashorama movies)
Half the time, it doesn't even make any sense. I can hear the Hollywood studio men saying: "Ya gotta have lots of trolls! Or Super-Trolls! Yeah - an they gotta throw big rocks or shoot rockets or something! Or exploding rocks, with rockets on the back, how about that?!"
Jeez. Save me.
It also tries to be funny at the wrong times, and fails so often that it sucks any shred of drama or suspense from the movie.
BAD DIRECTION
How does one squeeze limp results from Ian McKellan and Cate Blanchett? Martin Freeman and a few others survive the mailed-in direction, but all the actors come out wounded.
And there wasn't even a cursory attempt at plausibility — the point of a great fantasy movie is that you're so immersed that you REALLY BELIEVE . Well, if you can "really believe" the sequences in this movie, I'm guessing you've just smoked a pretty large spliff, or you're 3 years old.
Tolkien's crying in his grave.
BAD EFFECTS
Phew. Some of the action effects are so obviously fake they make you groan. Effects are supposed to make the unreal SEEM REAL — not jerk you out of your viewing experience as if someone yanked you by the hair and slapped you with a fish.
And the dwarf make-up - didn't someone tell them after the first movie? Some of the dwarfs look like real people and some look like 1950s rubber monster masks. It's constantly distracting from the story. Come on - somebody needs to go to remedial continuity school.
Anyway - if you love the genre and you want to watch this movie, go forth forewarned and preferably with a large pair of rose coloured glasses on and a six pack inside you.
OK. I'm done. 8-)