Fun, as far as watching a train wreck can be

Rating: 6/10 (16 December 2013)

The last go around in Unexpected Journey, many liberties were taken. Yet, with all the extra characters and walking about in the woods, it somewhat felt passingly like the book. This "sequel" of sorts is a big, boated thing that shares only names with the novel namesake and none of the spirit. In common with the first film, Bilbo seems to have an awfully small role. The manufactured elf Tauriel soaks up more lines and screen time than Martin Freeman. It continues...
Where Unexpected Journey was mostly loafing about for three hours, we're nearly pummeled into submission on the way to lonely mountain this year. The music score never lets you absorb a moment quietly. Every single camera or character movement is backed up by incessant audio cues. There are sub-plots of sub-plots. There is a love triangle and double crosses. There are lots of decapitations for a PG-13 movie. There are a lot of forced and unnecessary connections to the Jackson LOTR movies. The editing is often a blurry mess of nonsense, but to be honest I was never all that bored. Without Bennedict Cumberbach, the whole show could have been a lot worse than it is. So it isn't a great film, but it is a decent action movie. Albeit one that could shed an hour or more of fat. Overall, Desolation has even less in common with the book than the first film. But movies are movies and books are books.
So Desolation of Smaug is an absolutely awful adaptation of The Hobbit, but it is also generally an entertaining movie. This may be as good as it gets. When the dragon is gone, I'm assuming in the next movie, we will be barraged by a lot of shots of CGI armies numbering in the thousands throwing spears, arrows and swords. I was bored of that before Peter Jackson did it ten years ago.