A Mess

Rating: 2/10 (13 December 2013)

Just saw "The Hobbit 2: We Already Ran Out of Material." It's a bloated, poorly-paced mess of a film with dramatic lack of loyalty to its source that doesn't know what it's trying to do. Is it a comedy? An action film? A fantasy adventure? No, it fails at all three.
I can accept that sometimes a movie adaptation of a book is different from its original source. That's just how adaptations work, and if Hobbit 2 were a good film on its own, I could forgive a lot of the seemingly-arbitrary changes. But it isn't. It's filled with inconsistencies, with stupid action scenes that don't make any sense (fire will still burn you even if you're six inches away from it, guys), with humor clumsily dropped in.
I loved Lord of the Rings. I found the first Hobbit movie acceptable. But this mess of a film shows a complete lack of regard not only for the book it's supposedly based on, but also for film-goers who just want a good movie. It's silly, it's badly written, and it's bloated to the point that I was praying for it to end about an hour and a half in.
Let's face facts: The Hobbit doesn't have enough material for three movies. The reason we're getting three is that the parent corporation shelled out big bucks for the sequels, so they had to find lots of needless material to shoehorn in. Friends don't let friends attend midnight showings of this terrible movie.