For fans only

Rating: 5/10 (10 October 2015)

I was never a fan of the series and I'm not going to be now.
This is a 30 min story, squeezed into a 2.5-hours movie. As always with Peter Jackson, Technical side is excellent but the movie has no soul and it stretches endlessly with slow speeches and scenes that are cartoonish and endless (dinosaur chase, anyone?). Why is the barrel riding sequence better than the jungle scene in "Indiana Jones 4"?
Actually, I'm amazed that I saw the whole thing - obviously I fast forward a lot - since with the previous movie(s) I gave up after 20-30 min.
I wasn't impressed by the barrel scene, which I heard great reviews about. The dragon "scene" was OK, but about 10 times the length it should have been.
The effects of putting "regular size" people together with dwarfs are amazing and completely seamless.