There must be a lot of pressure on a person involved in making a movie like “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”

First, you must meet the expectations of all the fans out there who fell in love with the original novel.

Secondly, you must meet the expectations of all the new fans who fell in love with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Thirdly, you must make a good movie with a coherent plot and good character development.

Finally, and most challenging of all, you must somehow make the second movie in a trilogy engaging and able to stand on its own, something that arguably hasn’t been done since “The Empire Strikes Back.”

The rise or fall of this second “Hobbit” movie can be laid at the feet of its producer and director, Peter Jackson.

Did he succeed at this most epic and difficult of cinematographic quests? Not really. “The Desolation of Smaug” is riddled with problems.

At times its CG is beautiful and breathtaking, at other times it is disappointing and amateurish.  The acting varies from intimate and believable to over the top and forced, and the plot is split in two, half following the book and the other half foreshadowing the war to come in “Lord of the Rings.”

“The Desolation of Smaug” suffers the same problem that second-in-a-trilogy movies have suffered for decades: it feels like filler. Nothing of real, lasting significance occurs, because that is all saved for the last movie. Nothing truly new is introduced, because all that happened in the first movie.

All that being said, the second “Hobbit” is, in fact, a good movie. Before you watch it, take a step back, forget the epic expectations that you have, forget that it’s part of the “Lord of the Rings”  series and all of the demands that your love of the original book will put on it and just watch the movie. It is funny, dramatic and well acted, and the visuals are stunning. “The Desolation of Smaug” is a good movie, and just that; not a wonderful movie, not an epic movie, not a life-changing movie.  Just a good movie.