A Paradoxical Film in the Worst Way

Rating: 2/10 (6 May 2014)

I just watched The Desolation of Smaug for the first time since I saw it and disliked it in theaters. It's still highly unlikeable. The entire movie is such a weird paradox. So bloated yet so anemic. So flashy and chaotic yet so utterly boring. The most important and weighty scenes play out like cartoons while the silliest, most contrived nonsense (like the Kili/Tauriel love story) is excruciatingly played out and takes itself far too seriously.
Beyond these problems, the film is clumsy in its pacing and has no flow to speak of. There's no structure, no rising action, climax or descending action; just stuff happening. Smaug feels like an afterthought when the film finally makes it to him, and beyond his cool design and Benedict's fantastic voice work he's a total failure. There's no sense of danger with him, no foreboding or menace. He practically plays tag with the dwarfs in a ludicrously silly action sequence that serves no purpose. Then the movie just ends. It's confusing and a bit pathetic.
The film does feature some nice bits of cinematography and Smaug does have his cool moments, but beyond that this is nothing more than a shameless cash grab that feels more and more irreverent to Tolkien with each passing minute. I despise the fans who demand that a film adaptation hold strictly to the novel, but "Desolation" is in a league of it's own where films seem to go out of their way to disregard and tarnish everything the novel set out to do in the first place. It's a lousy movie made by a now-lousy director.