From the visually stunning 2005 remake of King Kong to the underrated gems Dead Alive and Meet The Feebles---Peter Jackson has proven himself a great director. Now he takes on the world of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. We have been hearing about it for quite a while and fan boys and general audiences alike have been getting pumped up for it. In fact---on the weekend when Skyfall opened and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 was going to open the next week...The Hobbit reigned supreme in Fandango sales. Now---is it worth all the hype and excitement? No---not at all.
The film is an incredibly long endurance test that moves like molasses and is Jackson's first film that manages to be neither visually stunning nor exciting. The film follows Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman)---a hobbit who must help a group of dwarfs get back their stolen mountain home. Freeman is decent here but I feel as if this character could have used a more intense personality and less of one that feels as if it came out of a Friedberg-Seltzer parody film. The whole film is like this in fact. It manages to both look and feel both like it's trying to impress the audience too much and yet it also feels as if it's making fun of the very ideas it's presenting.
The whole beginning scene with Ian Holm and Elijah Wood also falls flat. It feels like a scene that was added in just so a few more actors could get a decent paycheck. The whole film actually feels like an excuse for people to get paychecks. I say this because they are screwing people into paying for the next films---one of two sequels in the works. Why are they making audiences sit through another one? Well----without giving too much away,.,,the ending is not so much an ending as a to be continued sign. The ending does not wrap up the movie and actually makes what the audience just watched confusing to them. Therefore---the audience must watch the next film to answer all their questions.
The film is way too long. At two and a half hours (not even including the endless credits)---there are simply too many scenes in which nothing happens. People walk, people talk but the audience is not excited in the least. There is not a single scene in fact that feels authentic or exciting. Also---the appearance of a mysterious creature named Gollum is annoyingly pretentious.
Where did Jackson go wrong? Perhaps he was too confident in himself. Perhaps he thought maybe he didn't even need to try. Perhaps there is simply no reason to make a live action film version of The Hobbit. I think the latter is correct. There was no possible way I can think of to make the dwarfs look even slightly normal in live action and the general story line isn't fit to a two and a half hour movie. Even if you're a fanboy---there is no reason you need to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in anywhere but the comfort of your own home.
(1 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence and frightening images)
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