The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The Desolation of Smaug offers the kind of movie-going experience whereby one starts to become aware of one's posterior at the half way mark, and as the film slowly lumbers its way towards its conclusion one's mind expresses a dwindling desire to sit through the credits, and rather, a fervent wish that one had chosen one's seat more wisely. I seem to remember that during this film my mind wandered to nether regions rarely visited unless in times of impatient waiting or moments of concern for my own sanity. I also considered taking up philanthropy, to campaign for the introduction of the humble interval to mainstream cinemas in order to save the casual moviegoer from the dreadful syndrome that is fatigue of a movie they had actually looked forward to seeing. And as the film drifted further into its story than my latest predicted end point my mind turned to food. This film is like butter scraped over too much bread - bread that has been kneaded and seeded to within an inch of its doughy little existence, and therefore its lumpy, a little uncomfortable to watch - beautiful no doubt but it doesn't quite settle as a comfortable yet thrilling experience.

A series of Tolkien inspired set pieces riding heavily on the nostalgia of the Lord of the Rings films. Disappointingly phoned in performance from Ian McKellen. The first film was passable, but honestly I would have preferred them just stopping much like Ralph Bakshi had to stop his LotR attempt. I understand deviating from the book to make something work on film, but the constant changes here seemed to be only for purpose of throwing in another heavily CGI'ed stunt sequence.

I only wanted to watch this film to see the dragon, which had not made a significant appearance by the half way mark of almost 1 1/2 hours. Being the parents of 3 young children, by this point in the evening my wife and I were too tired to continue watching. Had the film been more compelling then maybe we would have persevered but honestly it was a strange dreary mess. We didn't find time within the 48 hour rental period to watch the rest so I never found out what the dragon is like. By the way, such a short viewing window is absurd for a digital rental. Why is there a time constraint at all? Why can't the movie just expire whenever you have watched it to the end? Its not a physical copy that they need returned to rent to someone else. For this reason alone I seriously doubt whether I'll bother renting any more movies digitally.