The good, the bad, and the ugly of the second installment of The Hobbit

Rating: 5/10 (23 January 2014)

(spoiler alert) I went in with low expectations. They were met. Barely.
I thought the first 2/3 was great. But the final 1/3 with Smuag was just plain dumb.
It was great to return to Middle Earth. I will never tire of seeing new parts of it with Peter Jackson's movies.
The Good: Middle Earth.
The mountains.
The dwarfs.
Gandalf.
The continuing quest.
Laketown.
The elves.
The Bad and the Ugly The music. Uninspired. Average.
The river scene. It had great technical wizardry, but was just another ridiculously unrealistic fight scene. Why do movie makers do this? Do they think most of their viewers are under 10 or have less than 100 IQ? We want a certain level of realism in our movies.
The love story between Tauriel and Kily.
Smaug the lame dragon. When you have talking dragons, you're getting into the realm of kids' movies. Okay, it's a kids' book, but PJ has to know his audience is mostly adults and that he should have changed the story enough to appeal to his older, LOTR fanbase.
PJ has really gone downhill since LOTR trilogy. I don't care if the movie is faithful to the book. I just want a good movie. I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and say it's because of Guillermo Del Toro's involvement with the movie. PJ is still a genius, but he has severely reduced his stature with The Hobbit.
I'm keeping my expectations low for the final installment.