The Hobbit

Our local paper had this to say about The Hobbit: “‘The Hobbit,’ a movie that is exactly one Jar Jar Binks away from being as bad as ‘The Phantom Menace’.” In other words, the reviewer hated it. We read the review, and decided to go see the movie anyway. I didn’t hate it that much, but I’m not sure I really liked it, either. For such a charming story, I’m sorry to say that the film felt bloated and somewhat boring.

Part of the problem, I think, is that a book is not a film, and a film isn’t a book. You have to do some trimming if you’re going to have decent pacing, etc. in the movie version. Instead, scenes that are long in the book come out even longer in the film, and instead of making The Hobbit a stand alone film, they have instead decided to try to make it line up with The Lord of the Rings, including appendices that Tolkien included in the back of The Return of the King. Having just finished the book, I kept noticing things that were not in the book at all. Galadrial for one. I’ve heard that a lot of the elves from The Lord of the Rings are in the trilogy, where they really weren’t in the book. There were indeed some elves, but not the same characters.

So there you are, in a 3-D environment (I didn’t feel like 3-D added anything at all to the film. Then again, I rarely feel that it adds to a film.), watching scenes that have more to do with tying in to other films you’ve already seen than making a cohesive story on their own. In that way, I guess it is a bit like Phantom Menace. I wish that they had stuck with original ideas, to make one good movie out of it. Then if they wanted build a bridge between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I guess they could have done so.

Overall it was a disappointing film, though not entirely without charm. There were some wonderful scenes, and gosh, the scenery was lovely.