The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I was never interested in The Hobbit series. I love the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, but The Hobbit, as a movie series, never held the same allure. LOTR was this trilogy of books with a huge scope, a monumental quest, wars, alliances, betrayals, and so on. It felt EPIC, because the books it was based on were epic. The Hobbit, as a book, is not epic. It is compact. It is breezy. It is simple. Yes, it's a quest, but it does not convey the same grandeur and scope LOTR does. So, I skipped The Hobbit movies. But the wife, a huge fantasy fan, wanted to finally see them, and so she put this on. And ... yeah, it's exactly what I thought it would be. A movie that confuses scale for scope. It's a pool a hundred feet wide and a foot deep. That's no fault of the cast or crew. It's a beautiful movie to look at (minus some occasions of super-dodgy CGI), and the actors all do a fine job. Martin Freeman is the perfect Bilbo. They're all trying their hardest to elevate this to the level of the LOTR movies. But there just isn't enough meat on the bone. The Hobbit is such a simple story, and Peter Jackson had to create so much filler -- either new storylines, or dragging out existing plot points to the point of no return -- that the movie feels busy but empty. I know why he did it. New Line wanted to replicate the LOTR trilogy's success, so they mandated a new trilogy, and that corporate interference bleeds out of every scene. The studio notes are almost visible in tortured, elongated frame. And that's really all there is to it with The Hobbit. If this were a single movie adapting the entire story, it'd be great. But it isn't. It's bloated and flabby and languid. It flails in a desperate attempt to mimic its cinematic sibling, not understanding that it just isn't the same thing, it can't be the same thing because the core material isn't on the same level.