'The Hobbit' proves just because you can, doesn't mean you should - REVIEW

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Action Fantasy, 2014
2 hours, 24 minutes
Adapted and Directed by Peter Jackson
Based on The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Rated PG-13 for "extended scenes of intense fantasy action violence and frightening images"

Starring
Martin Freeman
Ian McKellen
Luke Evans
Richard Armitage
Evangeline Lily
Lee Pace
Orlando Bloom
Ken Scott
Aidan Turner


"You've won the Mountain. Is that not enough?"

SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. 

I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet.
I love the LOTR film trilogy. I love The Hobbit as a book and as a story. But I don't like it when Peter Jackson turns a children's story into a sprawling epic that tries so hard to be as wide in scope as the original films that put Jackson's name on the map. It's too messy and straight up does not work.

I don't know where to start. For one, the events set in motion by the first two films seem to just kinda END after the first 15 minutes, leaving the set up from the second film seem wasteful. A bunch of subplots wrap up quickly and then some new shit starts happening. It's kind of a weird transition, like the first 15 minutes of the film could have come at the end of the second one, but then, OH WAIT, THAT'S RIGHT, there would be no third movie. Welp, ya got another ticket out of us, Peter. Hope you're happy.

The writing is LAUGHABLY awful. Like, the kind of awful in which I literally laughed out loud. Some bullshit romance subplot (which doesn't exist in the book) with a dwarf and an elf (the elf in question doesn't even exist in the fucking book) and then Legolas (also NOT IN THE FUCKING BOOK) says something hilarious about his father does not control his heart or whatever the fuck. Then, at the end of the film, the girl says some bullshit like, "If this is what love feels like, I don't want it!" And that's AFTER her dwarf boyfriend dies. Because they just had to kill off two of the most characterized dwarves in the film (because that TOTALLY happens in the book... okay, Thorin dies, but I don't think the other one does. It's been a while since I've read the books...). The whole movie is full of awfully generic dialogue to the point where I am stunned that this is even a thing. Not all bad dialogue is noticeable. In this case, it is to a fault.

The visual effects are all over the place. The movie looks fine from a distance. Literally. Sweeping pans of the vast Middle Earth landscapes look phenomenal, as they did in the original trilogy. But close up? Not so much. Everything is bogged down by CGI that is far too heavy for its own good. As a result, it looks like a typical blockbuster. There's even a moment when Legolas does something so fucking ridiculous and the CGI looks so bad that the audience laughed. Hell, that happened quite a bit, come to think of it.

I could go on, but I'll put it like this: if your film looks more fake than something that came out over 10 years ago, you have a problem. Especially with such a monstrous budget.

So what's good about the movie? Not much. The performances are pretty good, Martin Freeman in particular. Ian McKellen is obviously amazing as he has ever been as Gandalf, and Luke Evans is great as Bard the Bowman. The rest of the dwarves are fine. Everyone else is... just fine...

I really can't recommend this movie. It's not good, guys. It's just two and a half hours of non-stop fantasy action that is disgraceful to Tolkien's book. I wanted to enjoy it, but this is really just generic Hollywood fanfare at it's finest.

5/10