Worse than the first movie, but still OK

Rating: Null/10 (18 December 2002)

This movie is similar to the first one, but is slightly different. Here are the bad things: 1. The director has done a bad job running several story lines in parallel and switching between them arbitrarily. 2. bad camerawork during fights - the camera moves too quickly and it is hard to follow what is going on. The whole movie is too fast-paced, but this is Hollywood (...) 3. "sentimental moments" - i.e. they turn on some seemingly sentimental
music and characters begin looking at each other in some special way and saying trite things about friendship or love. 4. "Dwarf humor". OK, the dwarf is small and funny. You say it ones, you say it twice, again, and again, and again. The movie is not about the dwarf after all. 5. Too much Gorlum. OK, he has two personalities constantly fighting each other. You show it once, you show it twice, ... He is not the main figure in the story.
So, all in all, the movie is a little bit too long with lots of typical Hollywood cliches. But there is good animation, special effects. The fights are really interesting in places, but, of course, easily predictable. Very nice mountains in NZ. The movie still has a lot of good things in it and is definitely worth watching once.