Actually, I do feel a little desolated.

Gandalf looked at him. "My dear Bilbo!" he said. "Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

The Desolation of Smaug, the second installment in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit, offers a good solid hour of entertainment to the moviegoing public – unfortunately, it’s 161 minutes long.  Apparently it was decided mid-production to go from two movies to three, and this film clearly shows the penalty that they had to pay to achieve that goal.

I'm more than willing to accept that for people unfamiliar with the original story, The Desolation of Smaug may be a wonderful movie.  Peter Jackson certainly knows how to frame a story visually, the special effects are impeccable, Smaug the Dragon is very well done, and Martin Freeman continues to perfectly personify Bilbo Baggins, the diffidently brave hobbit hero.  In the original Tolkien story, Thorin Oakenshield is the only dwarf that really stood out to me as a character, but in the movie adaptation each of Thorin's companions has been given a distinctive look and personality.

However, to my critical eye, there were just too many scenes in the movie that felt stretched out longer than they should have been, like the dwarves’ escape from the elves of Mirkwood via barrel. Rather like the escape from the goblins in the first movie, it went on just a little bit too long - in fact, it was strongly reminiscent of that scene in terms of pacing, direction, and improbable physics, and like that scene, could have been cut in half after it had made its point in terms of plot and visual impact.

On top of that, there are a lot of elements in the script that were created out of whole cloth for the film.  Okay, fine, let's add Legolas to the movie - he's not in the original book, but he could have been, he is quite correctly identified as the son of Thranduil, king of the elves of Mirkwood, so it's not out of the question as retroactive continuity goes.

The addition of Tauriel, the female head of the Mirkwood guard?  The forbidden relationship between her and Legolas, and her flirtation with Kili the dwarf?  (And his near-fatal leg wound?)  The whole raft (no pun intended) of confusing subplots involving Bard of Laketown?  The marauding orcs? The lengthy hide-and-seek with Smaug in the halls of Erebor?* There were just too many things that extended the running time of the movie without really doing anything to advance the story.

There may be worse ahead of us. I checked the page count for the section of The Hobbit which makes up the script for The Desolation of Smaug, and although it took care of an acceptable 118 pages of action, it still felt padded out.  The bad news is that it leaves about 52 pages for the final film in the trilogy.  If it felt like the story was spread too thin in this film, that final 52 pages is going to go on for a long, long time in the final segment of The Hobbit.

However, Hollywood has done worse things – after all, Total Recall is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick that’s only 17 pages in length.  Compared to that, 52 pages looks like plenty of raw material for two and a half hours of potential popcorn sales.

- Sid

* I know what you're thinking, Dorothy, but these are NOT spoilers, the revised plot line is common knowledge on the Internet.