The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is generally a better movie than the previous Hobbit movie… though even more stuffed with made-up plots that cannot be explained away as stuff from the appendices… but that’s ok… it fleshes out some of the dwarves and other thinly-defined characters from the book and manages to do something with the more… problematic dramatic moments from the book that wouldn’t fly in today’s publishing market (or movie). Oh, and 100% fewer eagles saving the day. Some fantastic action scenes – especially a river escape with a lot of amazing and fun stunt-work and FX (yeah, the scene was a LOT more sedate in the novel but what are you gonna do at this point?)

Yeah, it’s overstuffed and busy and close to 3 hours long and you’ll know if you want to sit through it or not after four previous LOTR movies. Hell, you’ve probably already seen it if yer gonna see it! And, yeah, another year wait for part 3 and the end of the story… and another underwhelming cut-to-credits.

Score: 84