Is “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (although, really, who can call this an unexpected journey? the lack of self-awareness in keeping that subtitle is staggering) a bad movie? Not at all. It’s a solid spectacle, and arguably more fun than much of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the problem is that it really isn’t the best movie ever made, and so a lot of the hyperbolic chatter on the internet by diehard Tolkien fans may have you ready to see a movie that doesn’t exist.
What Works: I’m not a huge Tolkien fan, and I’m really not much of a Peter-Jackson-directing-Tolkien-fan. I think his “Middle-Earth” epics are bloated (with inexcusable running times), a little too quaint, are never funny at all no matter how much they try to be, and are pretty rarely thrilling since we know nothing too bad is going to happen. That being said, there’s a part of me that will always enjoy seeing a bloated, quaint, ultra-nerdy epic, and the best parts of The Hobbit tap into a desire to see old-school filmmaking with new-school technology. I would argue that this movie may not be as grand as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but, in parts, it’s a little bit more fun. [And I was never a big fan of the The Two Towers or Return of the King anyway.] Martin Freeman makes for a more interesting hero than Elijah Wood ever did——one of my favorite scenes is when he almost wimps out on the adventure of a lifetime, and then he sees his empty house for what it really is——and the Battle-of-Riddles between him and Gollum is perhaps the best scene in the movie. In that one brief, glimmering moment, the film comes fully alive, ready to embrace a danger that is lacking in the rest of it.
Side-Note: There’s been a lot of talk about this film using a new 3D technology, well, I watched in 3D and I couldn’t tell a difference. The colors are supposed to be less muted, and maybe they are, but I don’t think most audiences will really find the extra 3 dollar ticket price to be worth seeing it in 3D.
What Doesn’t Work: There’s almost no suspense. It begins by showing us that Frodo is alive and well (I know it’s a prequel, but still) and the film has a bad habit of characters having flashbacks to dangerous situations where we know they survive instead of just letting those situations play out. [There’s one very poor instance where a forest hobbit follows a dangerous trail…and then it cuts away to something else, and then he tells them what happened in the dangerous situation, instead of just letting us follow him there naturally, where, you know, some suspense for his life might have been achieved.]
Also, The Hobbit is billed as a more playful, funny work than The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and humor is not Tolkien’s strong suit at all. The jokes are corny, and my Lord is this movie a sausage-fest. It has a grand total of ONE female speaking part (Cate Blanchett) despite a cast of nearly fifty people. But the most annoying thing is the ending, a huge cliff-hanger that stops the film right when it gets good. I like cliffhangers in general, but there’s no denying that they’re stretching this one book into three movies is really just a cash grab.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Kept The Hobbit at two books instead of three, not had so many filler scenes, and maybe explained why Thorin (who’s supposed to be the leader of the Dwarves but really just seems like an idiot) is always so pissed off. I know an orc killed his father, but did an orc also shit in his breakfast each and every morning the journey was taking place?