The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

GRADE: F

The Movie's Highlights:

Pacing: Awfully slow and droll, it takes forever to get from point A to B. Infact, they never make it.

Setting: Typical fantasy kingdom, impressive touch to detail but Style can NEVER substitute for substance

Ending: Falls flat. No starting goals ever get fulfilled. Equal parts confounding and appalling. Brings the story down another level.

          Many movies to cover within the next few weeks, but none of them as big as The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The plot revolves around Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit without a sense of adventure with not much, of a past, nor much of an important future. One day he is summoned by Gandalf to join the forces of the Dwarf kingdom (Stupid, I know.) to take back the stolen mountain which was taken over by a dragon (Unexplained what the dragon's goals are) thus making them a bunch of thieves. (Seriously, am I supposed to be buying this?) Now being as it is a LOTR Prequel, I had high expectations that it would live up to it's name. Now let's talk about how the film viewing, it is shot in 48 frames per second in 3D and it looks terrible. The screen gets too bright and the camera seems to be too over focused, I had a headache and was prepared to walk out, but i just had to stay cause I was anxious for something amazing to happen. But alas, nothing. 
          
          This movie is an adaptation of a 250 page pre-teen book, and yet is stretched out into 3 hours. Not to mention the fact that the writers of the film designed it like a video game, first the trolls, then the Orcs then the this, and the that, and the BOSS ORC and as soon as we're about to get to the dragon, BOOM the movie ends. No joke, this movie felt like a 3 hour filler and left me so impatient. Now about the plot, it's dull we have so many jumps in logic, even for a fantasy film, and so much unimportant filler stories like the one of the Brown Wizard, and the Necromancer. I just didn't care for anything in this movie, not to mention the fact that it felt like a LOTR copy-paste and had few like-able characters (Mostly ignorable and only put in to fill their stereotypical roles) and tons of un-interesting flashbacks and back stories. Now about the special effects they were great, although most talented directors could pull it of if given a huge budget. I was under the impression that the characters in the film were slumming, and the fan-base over-hyping the film only care to see it cause it has relations to LOTR, but at the end of the day, its just not as good. 

          The film plays out as a special effects bonanza relying on a thin plot and since I wasn't given a satisfying conclusion with the Dragon and the character connections, the film had no impact on me whatsoever and has probably killed the franchise cold dead. What can I say? I paid money to see the start of a masterpiece but, I walked out of the theater half asleep. I'm done with LOTR.