My review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The most frustrating thing about the
Hobbit movies is how I can't quite manage to dismiss them completely. Reading
my review of the first film is an amusing, if somewhat embarrassingly effusive, flashback to when I was still optimistic about the franchise. My second review had internalized the cynicism to some extent, but was still reluctantly positive. And with the third installment, yet again, I kind of enjoyed the film.
[Spoilers]
Throughout the two and a half hour run-length of
The Battle of the Five Armies, I was fighting to hate it. Part of the problem is that Peter Jackson still shows flashes of his old genius, though marred by his utter lack of restraint. The film begins with the quick, dramatic dispatching of Smaug the dragon by Bard and Bard Jr. (really Bain). This act is accomplished using a cobbled-together bow to launch a giant arrow off of Bain's shoulder. The shoulder thing was a neat idea, a great element of added personal tension, but to convince us that a makeshift bow would launch a huge arrow off a little boy's shoulder...uh, no.
