It IS possible to love your material too much ...

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2013)

... and it is clear that Peter Jackson loves his source material so much that the results are to the detriment of resulting movie.
In his effort to fill out every character and event with a detailed back story and extensive history, he has completely lost that magical and paradoxical combination of fairytale simplicity and deep profundity that made Tolkein's book a classic (and such a satisfying set up for the epic Lord of the Rings that followed). Instead, we tries to tell THIS story on an epic scale, and The Hobbit got lost somewhere in the process.
The other problem with over-extending the story on such a bloated scale is more basic. It is now a play in three acts ... three mammoth acts of 2-3 hours each, with intermissions of a year or more between each act.
Act One was all exposition. It isn't really until this movie (Act Two) that you begin to provide the true basis of drama: conflict and suspense. And the results are better than in the first movie ... but ultimately disappointing. 160 minutes spent at a breakneck pace to create complications and difficulties for every character and subplot ... NONE of which are brought to dramatic resolution. It is all tease, no pay off. All cliff hanger. For that, we will have to wait ANOTHER year for part three.