Bloated, but Some Bright Spots

Rating: 6/10 (7 September 2016)

I think with each movie that Peter Jackson has made in the Middle Earth universe they've grown more bloated and meandering. I think The Lord of the Rings suffered from this as well, but not to the detriment of the quality of those movies, and not to the same extent as it happened to The Hobbit. This is because The Hobbit movies are filled with some of the ugliest and more garish CGI I've ever seen. The cast is full of characters who are very hard to feel sympathy for. And the story, full of lightheartedness in the book, is continually thrust into epic-mode when the backbone of the story can't really handle it.
I think The Desolation of Smaug is quite fun when it's focused on being weird. I liked the scenes in Mirkwood, with the hallucinations and the spider. It's full of classic Peter Jackson weirdness and creepiness. I liked a few of the fight scenes and Smaug is great, as well.
However, the Dwarfs completely bog this down into mediocre territory. They're terrible characters for a variety of reasons. I'll give you two: you can't tell any of them apart personality-wise; no wonder they made some of them so ridiculous looking. Secondly: they're all just a bunch of greedy and selfish characters who don't ever listen to anyone. They bring all their hardships on themselves and they don't seem to respect anyone else's opinions or advice. When they were running away from Smaug in the mountain I could hardly keep my eyes open.
I love Martin Freeman as Bilbo, however. The movies shines whenever the spotlight is on him. It's too bad he spends a lot of this as a bystander to less interesting character's plights.