Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) by Dartboard — 20 Jan 2015

Reasonably entertaining, but it feels obligatory and suffers from a lack of heart and passion. Not nearly as emotionally enthralling as any of the Lord of the Rings films, and you can only have so many fight sequences before they start to blur together.

The story is thin and does not sustain a 144-minute film, so you might find it a bit dull by the time the third act rolls around. There are a few subplots interwoven throughout, but they leave next to no impact, and that's a problem with the film as a whole, I feel - it's a finale without impact.

That in itself is disappointing. That said, the film is technically sound, the performances are solid (despite the occasional cringe-worthy piece of dialogue), and it's always nice to take a visit to Middle-earth.

Unfortunately, none of these qualities save it from the weak writing, which is made even more unfortunate by the potential the trilogy had after The Desolation of Smaug.