This is not The Hobbit

Rating: 1/10 (3 January 2014)

In my review of the first Hobbit movie I complained that PJ was taking liberties with the story line and brushing over important details for the sake of action. Well, in part 2 he dispenses with such inconveniences as plot and credulity and instead plumps for almost 3 hours of ridiculous fight scenes, twisting the original story into such unwieldy and impossible shapes that you will very likely spend the entire film going 'What? That's not what happened! She doesn't even exist!'
I won't make a list or anything, but the dwarfs didn't split up, there wasn't an army of orcs chasing them, Laketown was nothing like that, Beorn didn't do that and so on etc etc. This is less The Hobbit and more PJ making it up as he goes along.
I know that Hollywood needs a love story to feed the need for the get the girl kill the baddies plot line that's been the staple of film making for almost a century, but to entirely invent 2 characters (Legolas is not mentioned in The Hobbit) simply to make it happen reeks of desperation. We shan't mention the vomit inducing Dwarf/Elf touchy feely segment.
The film fails on all but the most basic of levels; it is an action film, very loosely based on a JRR Tolkien novel. What it certainly is not is The Hobbit, a tale of adventure and personal courage. had this been made before LOTR then it would have rightly been laughed out of the cinema, but audiences are so hungry for more of the same that Jackson has been allowed to do whatever he likes, even, once again, adding a knob gag to a children's story.
For his next project I fully expect him to remake the story of Jesus, only this time he'll be a prize fighter who has to beat Pilate to win the life of Mary Magdelene, who has been taken prisoner by the evil drug lord Satan.
Utterly appalling.