Reel Reviews

The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies -- Diseases sometimes run in families; that may be the best way to think of the things that are wrong with this movie. As with its brethren films in this trilogy that should have been one feature, it suffers from the same frailties--only here those problems are magnified due to having festered all the way through two films already. The liberties with the story--both wild extrapolations from the original text and outright fundamental revisions to the story--are least welcome here at the climax and denouement; the deviations are all the more glaring in their lack of respect for the original material. Certain Elves don't belong in this story; a minor character is given way too much screen time; and the attempt at epic scope in the final battle just makes things confused and unclear. Ironically, a lust for dragon's gold--in this case, box office wealth--is what did in this project from the start. Let it be a lesson to future filmmakers.