The Hobbit, the Tolkein foundation of almost everything nerdy.
Bottom Line: This movie was meh. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good either. There were a few scenes I liked a lot, a couple scenes I despised, and a lot of scenes that could have been better.
Big Picture Problems:
#1: the conception. There simply is not enough finished material to make a good Hobbit trilogy. There's the original book, which was for kids, and unfinished works rewriting this for an adult audience. I haven't read these unfinished works, but usually things are left unfinished for a reason. So the action gets played out longer, the scenes exaggerated further. To me the movie feels like an unfunny, overlong sketch at the end of SNL that only got air time because they had nothing better.
#2: the tone. Is this a mad cap adventure with bumbling, squabbling dwarves or a grim quest to retake these Dwarves homeland? It usually plays to the latter, but there are attempts at comic relief. When its the dwarves amongst themselves it works, but when it's a newly eviscerated Goblin King it doesn't.
#3: Deus Ex Gandalfina. Apparently Gandalf is the only one capable of solving a problem. Which would work fine with the bumbling version, but in the grim quest version it makes Thorin's company impotent.
Annoyances:
in order of importance
all the battle scenes are mottled and confusing. Since the last 45 minutes is one long running battle this is kind of a deal with me. It gave me a headache.
Rock em Sock em Stone Giants. Ok this should be so minor that it shouldn't make it to a review. But this is where the movie went off the rails for me. They looked so absurd, and they added nothing to the story. I hated, hated, hated the Stone Giants.
Radagast the Poo Stain. Another something minor. He wasn't in the film much, but every scene he appeared in was agony for me.
Things I liked:
the Elijah Woods intro, the first Bag End dinner and Riddles were all well done. Riddles especially.
Martin Freeman is excellent as Bilbo. I enjoyed the film, but I also made a decision going in that I wasn't going to trip off how not like the book it was.
ReplyDeleteThe scene with Saruman and Galadriel was unnecessary, but well acted.
If it could have used anything, it would have been more Legolas.
I agree with most of your critique, but I also thought Bilbo was great. The overall treatment was so long and so drawn-out. It did have the same feeling as the LotR trilogy, which can only be a good thing, but this felt too much like an inevitable money suck because the trilogy was so successful.
ReplyDelete-Nakoa