Glossy but vacuous

Rating: 3/10 (29 April 2014)

Lots of people seemed to feel the first Hobbit film was too slow, while the second nicely picked up the pace. Personally, I see the reverse.
The first film was slow, but to some purpose. The lengthy intro in Hobbitton gives us some worthwhile characterization. As the expedition moves through the wild, the action builds to a suitable climax. It's all a bit overblown and over-hyped, but it works.
In the second film, it's one endless action sequence after another. Barrel-riding on the river (in open, easily-swamped barrels) turns into a ludicrous extravaganza of 3D heroics by two characters who aren't even in the book - and who therefore can do nothing to advance the storyline of the movie. But the final battle with Smaug is even worse - an endless barrage of increasingly implausible CG-rendered escapades, which again have nothing whatsoever to contribute to the story - given that in the book, the dwarfs never actually meet Smaug at all.
What's particularly galling is that Jackson actually OMITS some of the best parts of the book. The arrival at Beorn's house, in the previous film, skips the clever introduction of the dwarfs, two at a time - a classic fairy-tale passage. The trek through the woods, which in the book extends to weeks of gloom, terror and privation, is reduced to a ridiculous, brilliantly-lit slug-fest with special-effects spiders.
The endless interludes with Gandalf, Radagast and Sauron are well filmed, but obviously needless. It's like an extended product-placement: a trailer for the Lord of the Rings trilogy edited right into an unrelated story.
I did like Stephen Fry's performance as the Master of Laketown, and I liked the image of Smaug. Aside from that, there's very little excuse for this film. It not only fails to capture the spirit - or even the major events - of the book, it's dead boring as a piece of cinema.
I can understand Peter Jackson reaching for a big box of Tolkien Helper in order to extend these movies to such extreme length. But it might have been better if he'd waited till he ran out of actual Tolkien.
(BTW: my apologies for the misspelling of "dwarves" - IMDb keeps changing it.)