The easy review: it’s too long.

I hope that the decision to make three movies out of one book wasn’t made by Peter Jackson. The result of this decision is clear in the second of the series—you have a movie that simultaneously lacked enough plot to fill a movie, while being too long to keep me entertained. The filler was obvious and unfortunate.

The CGI was mostly well done, but at times it was quite poor; almost comically poor. Speaking of, one scene still stands out as extremely misplaced. In this great saga of a story, Warner Brothers made the choice to allow what I can only describe as slapstick to carry the plot. Sure, it was amusing, but it was out of character. It only accentuated the feeling that the movie was stretched to fit the time that the studio or Mr. Jackson felt the movie should run.

Even the title didn’t seem quite fitting. The end of the first movie showed the great dragon awakening, and yet much of the movie was still build-up to his appearance. The desolation is just a story of the past, smaug gets really angry and finally starts to wreak havoc just in time to… Roll credits.

And yet, I paid my money, and I know that when the last part is released, I’ll go to that too. Because I am a sucker that way.

But unlike The Lord of the Rings, I won’t be buying the director’s edition this time around. Well… I might buy it if it is properly edited and quite a bit shorter.

My advice is to wait for video and use the fast forward button with impunity.