Stretched like butter over too much bread

Rating: 3/10 (17 December 2013)

Oh My! I had wondered how they were going to get three movies out of this simple children's book. With or without references to the Appendices to Lord of The Rings or the Silmarillion.
Well now I know, keep the title, give a nod now and then to some of the scenes which reflect the book and then add on totally unconnected story lines that are almost a separate film and chuck in a strange and unfathomable love interest and a character from the original trilogy.
Also make sure there is an initially interesting, but ultimately boring series of action sequences every 15 minutes or so and voila: A dog's Dinner of a film.
I felt this was a Hollywood sellout: No attempt at deeper characterisation of the existing characters or characters like Beorn who were prominent in the book, though I was dubious indeed about Bard the Bowman and unhappy with the introduction of an automatic black arrow chucker.
I mentally replaced Smaug on the loot with Warner brother's execs and the the trilogy made much more sense.
Smaug and Dominic Cumberbatch's voice acting were superb. But even here we were treated to another pointless exercise in time filling with action. The liquid gold was totally unrealistic and the whole chase sequence reduced Smaug to an archetypal Hollywood villain, not the true menace he was meant to be. Their take on smaug the golden finished me off, no wonder the cinema on the first day emptied, you could feel people sliding away from any engagement.
I rather imagine that Bilbo is echoing the writers when he says at the end:
"what have we done?"