The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Review: The Dragon Wakes

Is The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug worth watching?

It depends, but if you are going to watch one Hobbit film with enthusiasm, make it this one. The Desolation of Smaug is livelier, stranger and more exciting than its predecessor, and its dragon is one of the great digital creations. Peter Jackson finally lets the adventure move, with a string of inventive set pieces and a spellbinding encounter beneath the mountain. The reservations are familiar: too much invented material, a running time close to three hours and an ending that stops rather than concludes.

What is The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug about?

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug picks up with Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Thorin Oakenshield’s company of dwarves having escaped the Misty Mountains. Bilbo now carries a mysterious ring he found along the way. The company continues east towards the Lonely Mountain, where the dragon Smaug (voiced and performance-captured by Benedict Cumberbatch) sleeps on the dwarves’ stolen gold.

The road takes them through the dark forest of Mirkwood, into the realm of the wood-elf king Thranduil (Lee Pace) and on to Lake-town, a struggling human settlement ruled by a greedy Master (Stephen Fry), where a bargeman named Bard (Luke Evans) becomes important. Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly play elves Legolas and Tauriel. Jackson directs this New Zealand and American production in English, and it runs 161 minutes.

Pulp adventure at last

Where An Unexpected Journey dawdled, this sequel keeps moving. The Mirkwood sequence, with its disorienting forest and giant spiders, is genuinely creepy, and the escape from the elves in floating barrels down a rushing river is the trilogy’s best action scene: witty, fluid and full of physical gags. It feels like old-fashioned adventure cinema, cheerfully ridiculous and superbly choreographed.

Lake-town gives the film welcome texture. Its rickety wooden houses, political scheming and poverty show a different side of Middle-earth, and Evans lends Bard a grounded seriousness. Fry, meanwhile, plays the town’s Master as a vain, grasping buffoon, enjoyable even when the comedy is broad.

Cumberbatch’s Smaug steals the film

The film’s reason to exist arrives in its final stretch. Bilbo’s meeting with Smaug amid mountains of treasure is a masterclass in suspense, and the design of the dragon, immense, glittering and intelligent, is extraordinary. Cumberbatch’s voice, deep and silky and amused, makes Smaug a creature of vanity as much as menace, and his conversation with Bilbo, full of riddles and flattery, captures the tone of Tolkien’s book better than anything else in the trilogy.

Freeman is again excellent as Bilbo, now braver but increasingly marked by the ring he carries. Richard Armitage’s Thorin grows more troubling as the mountain comes within reach.

Where the padding still shows

The trilogy’s structural problems remain. Tauriel, an elf invented for the films, is given a romance with a young dwarf that feels designed to add a love story rather than to deepen the tale. Legolas is here mainly for acrobatic fight scenes, and Gandalf’s side-quest to investigate a gathering evil draws time away from the central journey to set up The Lord of the Rings. Some action sequences run long and become more cartoonish than thrilling. Most frustrating for some viewers, the film ends on an abrupt cliffhanger.

Who should watch The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug?

It is for anyone who enjoyed An Unexpected Journey, for adventure fans who like their fantasy lively and pulpy, and for viewers who simply want to see one of cinema’s best dragons. It is not a standalone film, so watch the first instalment beforehand. Set aside close to three hours. Violence is frequent but bloodless, and the spiders and dragon may frighten younger children.

Where to go next:

• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the slower first chapter you need before this one.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, a reminder of how a middle chapter can keep building momentum.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, for the same swashbuckling, playful kind of adventure.

The verdict

The Desolation of Smaug is the most entertaining Hobbit film, with a memorable dragon, a superb barrel chase and a stronger sense of adventure than its predecessor. Its padding, invented subplots and abrupt ending hold it back, but fantasy fans will find plenty to enjoy.

Rating: 3/5