5+ hours so far, with more to come.

Rating: 6/10 (30 August 2014)

Peter Jackson continues to stretch out Tolkein's timeless classic, no doubt building himself a pile of treasure almost as impressive as that of Smaug in the process. In this second part of three, the thirteen dwarfs, accompanied by one brave hobbit, continue their quest to reclaim their homeland of Erebor and retrieve the precious hoard guarded there by an ancient evil dragon. On their way, they are attacked by giant spiders in the forest of Mirkwood, escape from the woodland elves in barrels, travel to Laketown and find their way into the heart of the Lonely Mountain to confront the mighty fire breathing reptile. Plus lots of other stuff that wasn't written by Tolkein.
With the rather slight book (at least when compared to LOTR) being turned into a trilogy, there is a lot here that has been completely made-up by Jackson and company, a fact that will no doubt upset many Tolkein purists. Those viewers who are not that bothered about the additional new material might be rankled by the overuse of CGI, the overblown set pieces that see our death-defying heroes surviving numerous dangers against the odds, and an unnecessary romance. Anyone not bothered by these trifling matters will probably have a whale of a time, happily sitting through all 161 minutes with a big dumb smile on their face; I wish I could be so easily pleased.
To be fair, I did have a marginally better time with this part than I did with An Unexpected Journey: there's not so much puerile humour or singing this time around, there are no silly battling stone-giants, and my favourite bit of the book—the barrel escape—is in this chapter (although Jackson does his best to muck it up by having the dwarfs pursued by orcs along the way). Overall, however, I still consider this another disappointment from the once great director, a ridiculously padded adventure that could have and should have been absolutely awesome, but which ends on a particularly duff note by pointlessly drawing out the confrontation between Bilbo and Smaug by chucking those bloody dwarfs into the mix for an over-the-top CGI-fest of a finalé.