Disappointed, but not overly so

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2013)

The Desolation of Smaug is not a bad movie and will certainly find its audience. But where I found the first movie to be refreshingly entertaining, because it took time to tell the tale of the dwarfs' undertaking, this second movie brought back everything I didn't like from the original trilogy. Legolas surfing on a shield on the stairs of Helm's Deep or on an Oliphant's trunk. I found these over-the-top action scenes childish and unfit for otherwise really great movies.
However, in this movie, there was simply too much of it. Peter Jackson's decision of bringing Legolas and Tauriel into play is not bad per se. But when these two characters add nothing to the story other than showing at least a hundred creative ways of how to penetrate orcish skulls, I could not help but silently pray for these scenes to just go away. It seemed that Legolas actually lost a lot of skill in the time between the Hobbit storyline and the Lord of the Rings story, because if he had kept up the same dead-orcs-per-minute rate, Gimli and the rest of the fellowship would have had a quiet vacation trip with Legolas enjoying his Orc genocide.
Which is disappointing, because Bilbo's and Gandalf's performances are just as one would expect: absolutely fabulous. Smaug is a beautiful creation of modern CGI technology. I really enjoyed the movie's more silent minutes.