The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

You can always tell when a movie studio is banking on a certain feature film to carry them through for that particular quarter of the year, especially if upon the final test screening they realize that the movie turned out to a complete disaster. They then go into panic mode and inundate you with trailer after trailer until it's almost programmed in your brain to go see it. It's similar to when Chris Tucker in Money Talks warns Charlie Sheen to watch his back "I'll find you in the shower! Eating at picnics..." they are everywhere!

The movie I'm talking about is Angelina Jolie's Unbroken; and every trailer has this stupid kid on a bike screaming motivational cliché's like "If you can take it, you can make it!" or "You keep going like you're going, you're gonna wind up on the streets!" or "Try harder than the man next to you!" I'm 100% certain that no one has ever actually said these things in real life, they've just heard them in movies and I'm also certain that only one of those ridiculous sayings will actually make the final cut of the movie. But they burn this nonsense in your head in a lame attempt to get you pumped up for the movie.

The point of this ridiculously long intro is that while the final Hobbit movie didn't put a million motivational speeches in their trailer, they still managed to include every one ever imagined into the actual movie; and not a single one didn't make the final cut. The first act of the movie is nothing but cheesy one liners that dwarves, elves, and men use to threaten one another before battle but nothing actually happens until the Orcs show up.

And the Orcs have easily the freshest army in the movie. They talk trash, are unapologetically evil, and have giant earthworms and bats that are bred for only one thing...wait for it...WAR!!! What sucks is that once the earthworms and bats show up, they don't actually do anything, so it kind of a wasted set up. But the problems don't just start there.

The movie starts off with Smaug (the dragon) wreaking havoc on the village and Bard (Luke Evans) trying his best to defeat him. What's funny about the opening is that you actually get to clearly see an angry Smaug talking trash as he's wrecking shop but even with all of today's technology he still looks like the flying dog/dragon in The Neverending Story when his mouth moves. So it turns what would normally be a thrilling scene into pure comedy; and sadly that's the theme of the entire movie.

Action scenes that could be cool are ruined by gymkata inspired action and long gazing stares that turn normal death scenes into seemingly never ending silent monologues.

Now I know that it feels like I didn't like this movie but in actuality I did; just not for the reasons you would think. This is not a good movie for traditional reasons but good in the sense that Van Helsing or Wanted are considered good, some of the scenes are so over the top or completely pointless that you find yourself laughing out loud. The only thing that was missing was when Thorin Oakenshield had his dwarves combing the gold field for a special jewel, was a black dwarf taking off his helmet and saying "We aint found shit!!!"

This movie is FRESH, go see it.