The Hobbit: This week's delight

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Starring: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom
Rated: 6.5/10
Hollywood has the knack of making you inordinately interested in overt make-believe. This Hobbit, the second in a three-part series, holds you in your seat not by imposing visuals which are so much of a signature tune of such fantasy ventures but also due to the thriller sequence of events, many months after the first one in the series too wowed the audiences with its towering graphics and fertile imagination.
This time round the mission is even tougher so thrills many more. Hobbit, the thief, has to steal a white sparkling stone for the dwarf king from right under the nose of the fire dragon. The journey is full of pitfalls as deep as the gorges and jungles these dwarfs have to pass in order to get their land and kingdom back. The desolation of Smaug is their only option to survival with the dark clouds of a final assault by the dark king becoming thicker than the wrinkles of the old good-meaning wizard.
It’s a story you will be inexorably pulled into even if you are a non-consenting adult smirking around kiddy tales. So, to the credit of Hollywood’s CGIs and its mastery of not mutilating novels of high repute, this Hobbit  too is an emotional rollercoaster that you might have missed at Disneyland.
The only bad thing about the film though is that it ends just too abruptly for you to believe that you’ve actually been taken for a ride — you see there’s no ending this one — just release your bated breath and starts taking long breaths of patience — waiting for the third and final one in which the dragon is all set to take his revenge! 
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 15 December, 2013

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