Overrated

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Dumb and an embarrassment to Tolkien's legacy. There's really not much more to say. It might even be worse than "The Prequels".

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is selected by Gandalf as the 14th member of his team and is tasked with assisting a group of dwarves to reclaim their home Lonely Mountain. Baggins is initially reluctant to help, but does prove his worth and eventually wins over a group of rather sceptical dwarves...Many other people have probably eluded to the fact that it was going to be a tough task for Jackson to replicate the success of The Lord Of The Rings. Even going in with expectations of it being not as good (which it wasn't), it still wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be...The Lord Of The Rings films were long films, but in fairness I didn't really notice the time passing by when watching the original trilogy. Sadly that isn't the case here; the set-up to the story here goes on far too long and starts to grate after a while - I realise that some set-up is necessary, but if I'm not mistaken it's getting close to the hour mark before they even embark on their journey. The whole set-up with the dwarves arriving at Baggins house, goofing around and p***ing him off was mildly amusing, but again it was overdone and dragged on for too long.Perhaps that's the problem with this film - it felt like Jackson didn't really have the material to stretch the film to its 'epic' length of just under 3 hours so he just torturously padded the whole film out. Another example of this is Bilbo Baggins encounter with Gollum - yes it's necessary to the story, but again their 'riddling' battle of wits and Baggins playing hide and seek with Gollum whilst invisible seemed to be a long-winded and elaborate way of showing how Baggins acquired the ring. I also felt that the film didn't have much narrative structure or shape and Jackson had a tendency to dart the film in all kinds of directions which at times made the film feel a little muddled - he did this to an extent in LOTR, but it didn't feel as detrimental there as it does here.The performances by the main cast are a mixed bunch; McKellen is always good value and does an excellent job again. The likes of Hugo Weaving and Christopher Lee are solid in supporting roles. Freeman isn't quite as good as many of the other cast members, but does an OK job.Overall then The Hobbit is an OK film that is watchable, but by unnecessarily and painfully stretching the film out to nearly 3 hours in length the film does have a lot of dull stretches meaning that a lot of viewer patience will be required in order to endure it in its entirety.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a personal attack on your opinion This is just me expressing my own opinion on this film. I have no lens to hate or love this film more than it deserves.I really wanted to like this movie. I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy and was so happy when they announced the new trilogy. Although this review is six years prior to its release, I still needed to express my utter disappointment with this film.Peter Jackson has given us works of art in the past. The Lord of The Rings trilogy has brought millions, myself especially, into Tolkien's whimsical and majestic world of Middle Earth, providing character development, cinematography, and acting that declared it as the Godfather of all fantasy movies. This makes what I am about to say even sadder.As you can tell by my title, The Hobbit was an unorganized and shelled out mess that had potential to be an excellent movie, yet fell short. I firmly believe that the root of the failure of this movie is the fact that there was barely anything to work with from the beginning. Tolkien had written The Hobbit as a short book that was capable of being read within a day if you spent most of your time throughout the day reading it. It was a children's book. It was fun and adventurous, while providing some aspects of stakes what with the dragon and orcs. Even then the dragon was charismatic yet scary with his questions and booming presence that made the reader fell like they were two feet tall standing before a monstrous volcano. The orcs were barely in the book, considering Bilbo was knocked out halfway through the battle and since the book is told from his perspective didn't continue the story. This is why The Lord of The Rings was so successful, because they adapted three books and twelve years of work into three movies. There was so much content and so much work put into this extensive universe that was perfectly adapted into film.Another reason this movie wasn't good was because it most definitely wasn't pursued by Peter Jackson and that he absolutely had to make the fabled children's book The Hobbit a movie. This movie wasn't made from passion like Lord of the Rings was. Lord of the Rings was a movie first and foremost. It was not made because Peter Jackson believed it could make money, though that always is a priority, it was made because Jackson believed he could make this beautiful universe into something that mirrored its beauty. And oh, how it did. This is where the Hobbit is flawed. This is where it failed. This movie was made as a product that would be blindly accepted and loved by fanboys who will immediately adore and praise anything with Jackson's or Tolkien's name on it.Now, let's talk about the film itself. The pacing of this film is just... bad. Its length isn't because the director absolutely needed three hours to portray the story perfectly, it's because every other Jackson movie with Tolkien's work is three hours long. However, the reason why the Lord of the Rings movies are so long is because it converts 400 pages of information into one singular film. The Hobbit, however is only one book consisting of 350 pages (roughly). So there has to be an unbearable amount of filler to make it three hours. I think this trilogy could have done well if it was two movies that were three hours and not three boring and pointless three-hour movies. The first act is an egged-on mess that take 45 MINUTES in the theatrical version for the company to go anywhere or do anything of importance. This whole act could have been cut in half and still deliver the same important plot points without boring the audience to death. Typically, you use the first act for character development of all the important characters. You can reveal a person's entire character with three lines of dialogue if you do it right. A perfect example of this is Gimli in the Fellowship of the Ring, who gives one... ONE line of dialogue and you know his character. This is of course when he says, "Well then why are we just standing around?" and then proceeds to try and destroy the ring of power with an axe. This action defines him as a brash warrior, who doesn't think before he charges into battle. He didn't consider the fact that it was a magic ring created by the single darkest force Middle Earth has ever seen because that is his character. Naturally you would expect in a 45-minute time slot you would be able to develop your characters quite well, since he developed the characters in The Fellowship of the Ring in 15. The thing is... the characters were not developed in this act. They weren't developed in the slightest, most minute way. All the dwarves were characterized by either their appearance or by the fact that they are indeed dwarves. For example, the fat one is characterized by being fat. The crazy one is characterized by being crazy because of the axe lodged in his head. All the others love drinking, being loud, singing, eating, and violence which are characteristics that every dwarf in this series has shown. They sort of develop Thorin to be this cynical and brooding dwarf who wishes to forget his past, but that's it. We already know Gandalf due to the three other movies he's been in. Bilbo is the last main character to develop and they didn't even do him well. He is a scared and skeptical pretty boy who has never had an adventure in his life who Gandalf chose for who knows why and denies their invitation to join and then goes to bed. But wait, after a change of heart unprovoked by anything Bilbo chases after the company and goes on his grand adventure. He changed his mind just like that. Don't even think about how you can die a horrible death. Be spontaneous! Throw caution to the wind!The second act was probably the least important, in fact I don't necessarily know when the second act ends and the third begins, because it blends together very badly. I will assume, since this is what normally happens in movies when the main character gets separated from the group that sparks the third act, I'll say it starts when Bilbo falls into Gollums hole. I actually quite like the riddles for the ring scene, but I can guarantee that is only because of Andy Serkis' performance. His movement and voice acting are unparalleled by any other actor. But of course, they must have the "action" scene in the goblin cave which is clearly there to keep the audience from falling asleep. This scene is quite anticlimactic due to the fact you can't make singing miniature orcs menacing, no matter how much CGI you use to make them look incredibly disgusting.The third act is just as anticlimactic as the first because Thorin finally faces his sworn enemy who we have only seen in a flashback and two additional scenes. Boy, they really developed this character to be the worst guy ever. Spoiler alert Thorin gets his beat down and is saved by the humble Hobbit. Oh yeah and by the way, did I forget to mention that Azog was only mentioned in one line of dialogue in the book never seen or spoken of ever again. Anyway, it ends with the Eagles swooping in and saving everybody, because they only show up if something important is happening and Azog does the typical character going "NOOOOOOOO" when something bad happens. Then the Eagles drop them on a high cliff and don't just take them to the mountain because we gotta get those fanboys watching another two movies, so we can get that GREEEEEN PAPER. Then Thorin does the typical "I was wrong about you the whole time because you were useful during the ending" line. But wait what's that the Lonely Mountain? Oh, cool we'll be there in no time even though we're walking. And then there's the ending scene of Smaug being alive which makes all the lines doubting if he is alive in the next movie irrelevant because cliffhanger.I got weirdly sarcastic in the last act summary because I really am just done with this film.In conclusion, this isn't a film, it's a scam to get Tolkien fanboys to get excited about their favorite director doing another trilogy. Whether or not it's good doesn't matter to them because they'll love it unconditionally so long as it has Jacksons name on it.Sorry if I offended you, but this is my opinion, so don't take it personally. You can still like the movie if you want I don't care one bit. I just made this to maybe open your eyes to how awful this film really is. I like bad films, for example Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith a bad movie, but a bad movie I like for personal reasons and nostalgia.

Of the three movies that I've just watched back to back, the starting one is the most decent. The characters are getting built, their relationship and story are getting spun and, considering I was expecting an incredible bore of "a movie made by Hollywood for money from a book just 50 page long", I quite enjoyed it. The other two films go more and more over the top until they get into Pirates of the Caribbean territory, but this one was OK. Of course, that doesn't really mean anything, since you have to have seen all three movies to form an opinion, but I am just saying that if they went for the same recipe, this could have been a wonderful trilogy.What I felt it was obvious is that it is a true Lord of the Ring film series and that even if they had to improvise a lot, they did it in line with what they did in the LOTR movies.