So I thought splitting The Hobbit series into three different movies was a pretty desperate cash-grab on Peter Jackson’s part, and even if that still might turn out to be the case, I’ll admit that I’m glad he did it. For one thing, there’s something downright cozy about snuggling into the theater for an overlong but fully-welcome Tolkien movie. By now, it’s something close to fantasy romanticism, and the indulgence is half the fun. If we can sit through seven episodes of exposition in Game of Thrones before three episodes of action, then I’m cool with a couple of repetitive scenes of Gandalf stumbling through a side story.
What Works: This may be the most legitimately fun of all Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations. Some of the LOTRs films seem to be weighed down by their own ponderous, pseudo-serious mythology, but The Hobbit is an all-around sprightlier franchise. A chief reason for that is the bizarro-world character of Bilbo Baggins, who Martin Freeman (the original Jim from The Office, true story) plays as a fuddy-duddy old cat lady dropped into the middle of an action movie. His fussy reaction takes look like he’s playing somebody’s great aunt more than the hero in an adventure epic, but I think this works perfectly to make each scene feel a little bit fresher. [I wish I could say the same of the dwarves, but we’ll get to them under what doesn’t work.] He’s a much more interesting creation than LOTR’s Frodo.
I also fully enjoyed Benedict Cumberpatch’s Smaug, certainly the most intelligent evil dragon you’ll ever see in a movie. Cumberpatch’s voice is all nefarious butter, and almost-literally rotten with insinuation, a creature of his size probably doesn’t need to play head games with Bilbo, but the movie is all the better for him trying. The fire that keeps rising up from his belly feels tinged with bitterness and hatred, pretty heady-stuff for a CGI dragon. And the sequence combining arrow-shooting elves, evil orcs, and dwarves in barrels over a babbling river is the most genuinely fun sequence in any of these adaptations.
What Doesn’t: I hated Richard Armitage’s lead dwarf. This guy is supposed to ooze brooding cool, but he just looks like a big dip shit half the time. He’s almost always wrong, and probably would have been killed a dozen times without Gandalf or Bilbo to save him. It’s a little frustrating to keep watching him blow it while the movie seems to think these are examples of rogue awesomeness. [The other dwarves aren’t much better.] And this film heralds the return of Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, but I can’t be alone in not caring about this character at all, and thinking that if anything could be cut from this movie, it’s his screen time.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Lost’s Evangeline Lilly is terrifically alluring in her screen time with a regular-guy dwarf who likes he. How about a hot, X-rated dwarf-on-elf sex scene next time out? Who’s with me?! [Crickets]