I get where you are coming from, and while I haven't seen it, I totally understand it-based upon my wife's reports.

Yes, Fry is the Master of Lake Town, you got that right (I wanted to reaffirm you after such a tortuous experience ).

I don't think Cumberbatch's face really lends itself to being "dragonified" because of his strong and angled lines.

Glad you didn't feel like killings this-I'll take that as high praise

It's all animated, and honestly it's really damn impressive. It doesn't feel awkward or out of place.

It helps that his head is like 90% mouth, so they get a lot of leeway out of the lips.

But yeah, the lip sync/animation of Smaug in general was really impressive, especially when he's being the smart creature, giving little smirks and talking to Bilbo, and not just being the monster flailing around.

And oh yeah, I was reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaly feeling the length by the time they left Lake Town (which is like an hour 50mins).

"Everything that could be an action beat will be a 30 minute action sequence."
--Mandate for the movie.

This thing goes on forever, which is typical since Transformers 2 I guess? It's probably a good movie to have running on a second monitor while you are trying to design a perpetual motion machine but want to have something in the background to keep you from going insane.