All setup and no payoff

Rating: 3/10 (19 February 2018)

There doesn't seem much point in writing a plot summary for this film - if you've seen the first film then this film plot wise seems to re-tread very similar ground to An Unexpected Journey...
So yes familiarity and laziness is part of the problem with this film, but the larger issue lies with how goddamn boring it is. Like An Unexpected Journey we have another story drawn out painfully thin (although in DOS it feels longer and even more drawn out than AUJ). There are few, if any, genuinely exciting or intense moments - even the showdown at the end with Smaug was disappointing . Any camaraderie that existed between the characters in the first film seems to have all put disappeared; I seem to recall there being some amusing moments in the first film, but these moments come few and far between here.
Gandalf disappears for most of the film on his own quest which was barely explained and in some ways affected the flow of the film... well what little flow it actually had.
The only real plus points with this film lay with the cinematography and some of the special effects - although some of the special effects looked more ridiculous than breath-taking.
What I took from this film is that it was basically a very long dull trailer which only seemed to exist to set up the third film in the franchise. Whilst AUJ was disappointing but watchable DOS is just plain bad. I'm really hoping that the third film will somehow turn the franchise around, but after what I've witnessed so far I'm not going to hold my breath