Awright! We get to go back to Middle Earth! Like pretty much all of my geek brethren, that was my initial reaction when Peter Jackson finally got his desire to film The Hobbit pushed through the nightmare of lawsuits between Warner Brothers and MGM over film rights, and then MGMs bankruptcy proceedings. Yay! Then came the news that the adaptation would actually be a pair of movies. Okay, I guess with some stuff from Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” appendices and a little creative license, two average-length movies could come from the novel. Then, we get word that this simple little adventure story would be stretched into THREE films, and three-hour “epics” at that! Geez, Louise, how thinly can they possibly spread a pat of butter over so much bread???
Well, the finished product is finally here, so with a little bit of reservation, I went to see the first installment of this new trilogy yesterday. For the sake of brevity, I’ll assume that you, dear reader, are among the hundreds of millions of folks who’ve seen the Lord of the Rings movies, and thus won’t waste your time elaborating on the “adventures” about which Bilbo told Frodo, and which are depicted in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (and the next two movies…).
The first third of the movie
dawdles a bit, with a very-padded prologue leading off things showing
older-Bilbo beginning to tell this tale to Frodo. We see thirteen dwarves showing up in
separate pairs at Bilbo’s doorstep, raiding his pantry and making asses of
themselves, but at least they have the good manners to do the dishes afterwards
(don’t bother with trying to keep up with the thirteen dwarves - I won’t say
it’s impossible to do so, but it’s not entirely necessary, as Jackson does a
pretty good job of having whatever dwarf is important in any given scene
identified in the course of that scene).
The show finally does get on the road, so to speak, and while there are
a couple of sequences in the second and third acts that go on a bit longer than
I think necessary, the final two-thirds of the story on the whole moves along
fairly well, thankfully.
If you’ve read “The Hobbit,” then
you’re aware that, unlike the trilogy of books that followed, it is primarily a
children’s story, and as such, the movie that comes from it certainly has a
different tone than those three monstrously-successful movies from a decade
ago. Maybe that explains how the three Lord of the Rings films had a… I
started to say “majesty,” but perhaps that’s a bit over-the-top. Then I thought “originality,” but that’s
being a bit too harsh on the new film.
Whatever the term for which I’m searching, there’s some sort of sense of
wonder lacking from The Hobbit
that was present in the Lord of the
Rings. Perhaps it’s just
something as simple as the settings and effects not being new to us anymore, or
maybe it’s The Hobbit’s story
being a little bit less about the End of the World and more about one short guy
overcoming his agoraphobia.
I realize that this is sounding a bit
negative, but that’s not actually my intent, as there are good things about the
movie, starting with the cast. Martin
Freeman as Bilbo was a good choice. He
is his usual put-upon, underdog-self here, a personality type he always seems
to play so well (see Love, Actually
and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy),
and I liked how Ian McKellen played Gandalf with a different slant than he did
in the Lord of the Rings
flicks, conveying the character at an earlier stage in his life. The multitude of dwarves are actually quite
funny, and there are even appearances by some folks who pop up in the Lord of the Rings, so we do get
the sense that all of this is building to something, which seems a good thing.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this first installment of this Hobbit trilogy left me with a little bit of a feeling of “been there, done that.” I liked it okay, but unless it grows on me in the coming months after I see it again on home video a time or two, I’m not going to be in a very big hurry to get to the theater next December for the second one.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this first installment of this Hobbit trilogy left me with a little bit of a feeling of “been there, done that.” I liked it okay, but unless it grows on me in the coming months after I see it again on home video a time or two, I’m not going to be in a very big hurry to get to the theater next December for the second one.