"You know nothing!" - Orc

JON SNURRRRR.

Sorry, Peter Jackson. It's official. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are now the kings of contemporary fantasy storytelling.

And it absolutely pains me to say that. After a flawless track-record that stretched 11 long years and forged my childhood in solid gold nostalgia, The Desolation of Smaug flops and falls apart like uncooled, um, gold. Not possessing the gravitas or pace of the original trilogy which packs thousands of pages worth of mythos into 11 hours, this film manages to stretch out the book so clumsily that the team only cover about 20 miles, with an absolutely painful episode set in the low-point location in Laketown. There's a sense of paralysing inertia that hangs over the film, and no amount of nostalgia can really numb you to the blaring flaws.

That being said, there is plenty of merit in here. The third act contains some excellent set-pieces, particularly when Smaug lights up the screen. Benedict Cumberbatch steals the show with a motion-capture performance that damn near puts Andy Serkis to shame; his velvety tones making Smaug the sexiest-voiced dragon ever put to film. There's also some ridiculous fun to be had with the barrel set-piece, but at times, it walks the line between watching someone play a videogame and superb CGI extravaganza. The sets are as sumptuous as ever, but there's also a distinct sense of digital trickery looming over it, making you long for the more charming, practical days of the original trilogy.

The acting is also incredibly sketchy in parts. The star-performers of Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman are foolishly sidelined for a while so more attention can be given to the uninteresting dwarves and the politics of Laketown, not to mention an eye-rolling love triangle that punctuated the spectacular final act with even more unwanted deux ex machina. Freeman's scene with Cumberbatch is about as good as it gets, but smaller cameo moments like Stephen Fry's Master of Laketown and Lee Pace's elf king Thranduil threaten to derail the stop-start film.

For the first time, the dialogue clangs like gold on, um, more gold, with one particular use of "I dump my feces on your head" in Khuzdul cringing rather than amusing. For a screenplay with four writers, it feels lazily assembled and structured, with even the god-awful focus issues of The Two Towers paling in comparison to this scatter-shot, plate-spinning film.

All in all, The Desolation of Smaug is a huge disappointment and a big let-down for the franchise. My relatively decent rating is only because of some sheer nostalgia and intense love for certain moments, so take it with a pinch of salt. With the worrying title-renamement of the final film, I just hope The Battle of Five Armies can rescue the franchise like a giant, swooping eagle.