Less is More

Rating: 4/10 (30 December 2013)

The road to the Lonely Mountain continues for our company of 15 (13 dwarfs + Gandalf + our titular Hobbit), taking them through an evil forest, a less-than-friendly encounter with the woodland elves, a mad barrel chase, and finally a confrontation with the great dragon Smaug.
Two films in and it's getting harder not to keep kicking the very dead horse that is the "2 vs 3 films" debate. And yet Jackson, that lovable, fan-boy geek of a filmmaker, has finally overstretched himself to the point where seams not only show, but are sometimes downright embarrassing. Turning a 1000 page book and its dense appendices into 10 hours of film was a wise decision. Stretching a novel under 200 pages to nearly the same length might well turn out to be a folly.
The Jacksonian touch is still present and strong, don't get me wrong: the main cast more than pull their weight with obvious mention to Martin Freeman's Bilbo - arguably a much better character than Frodo or Sam in the Ring epic - Ian McKellen's Gandalf and the now ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch as a very threatening Smaug. Certain set-pieces also up the ante on anything produced to date in the realm of adventure cinema: the nasty spider ambush, a demented barrel-chase that matches the best of Tex Avery, and the reveal of Smaug. A lot of the humorous touches are also not only welcome, but pulled off to perfection, even if they draw attention to the film's great weakness: its tone.
The Hobbit is a brisk, fun, children's story. It is an adventure, Indiana Jones to Lord of the Rings' War and Peace if you will. Bar one nearly poetic encounter by Gandalf in Dol Guldur, every attempt by Jackson to bring these Hobbit installments closer to Lord of the Rings makes them lesser, longer and messier films.
Did we need a romantic triangle? Not really, especially one this devoid of consequence. Did anyone really want to see Legolas again? Or Frodo and old Bilbo in part 1 for that matter? No. A certain villain's appearance might be beautifully executed but for all the confusion it creates it might have been better to skip to the meat of this particular story. We only get to Smaug or any of his desolation the title refers to until 2/3 into this movie!
We all look back on the majesty and spectacle of the Lord of the Rings with genuine affection, but in the case of the Hobbit, less really would have been more, along with a more sustained focus on the elements that really work. And while we can look forward to more genius Jackson touches in part 3, given the sense of doom built up here and the number of subplots to bring to a close, intimacy probably isn't going to be that film's defining feature.
More's the pity.