The Hobbit - An entirely expected disappointment

When Peter Jackson announced that several years back that as a follow up to his epic Lord of the Rings trilogy he would be making a film adaptation of The Hobbit, I thought it sounded like we were in for treat.  Then it slowly emerged that Jackson would be making the ~200 page long novella into a trilogy of films to be released over 3 consecutive winters, the first of a series of announcements that slowly diminished my enthusiasm.  It emerged that the first of this trilogy would be 3 hours long, and that it would be filmed using more frames per second for some reason - ostensibly because it's 'better'.  By the time it came out in the cinemas in December last year my enthusiasm was entirely gone, gone to the point that I didn't even bother to go to see it.

A couple of weeks ago I was loaned a DVD copy of the opening part of the trilogy - "The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey".  The plot of The Hobbit is startlingly simple, and the plot of this opening part of the trilogy is simpler still.  Some 50 odd years before the events of the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf the Grey convinced Bilbo Baggins (now played by Martin Freeman) to go on a great adventure with a company of rather silly Dwarfs.  The Dwarfs are on a mission to recover a mystical artifact that will restore their nation to its former glory, Bilbo goes along so that he can acquire some anecdotes to tell in his old age.  The film opens with a sequence introducing the background to the Dwarfish nation, and then cuts to the present day in which Bilbo is visited by Gandalf.  The Dwarven contingent gradually arrive until they're all in Bilbo's house having a right ol' time.  Everyone gets to know each other and they agree to go off on an adventure.

This opening bit takes 40 minutes.  40 minutes is an insanely long time in which to have the establishing scenes of a film.  Though I guess we need that long to become familiar with the over-abundance of Dwarfs to whom we are introduced.  13 Dwarfs in fact, none of whose names I can remember now and all of whom are entirely interchangeable for each other (apart from the king Dwarf I suppose).  Once that's out of the way we then go walking to the big Elf city, then on to the big underground goblin kingdom where Bilbo meets Gollum.  They do a bit of tedious riddling and then Bilbo discovers THE RING.  Then there's a battle and it sort of ends without anyone any clearer if they're closer to their goal or just bumbling around in the woods for shits and giggles.

Despite this being a film over which a shit load of care and attention was obvious poured (witness the costumes and sets), it feels very functional.  It feels as though no one really cares about the story of the Hobbit, not the fans (The Hobbit is Lord of the Rings for kids after all), not the studio (they only care about the money) and not the director (perhaps he wanted a make a single film rather than a trilogy?).  It all feels like it's being made by accountants directing CGI whizz-kids, the film moves from one scene to the next introducing each character one after the other ticking off elements from the book and trying to cram every last fan boy-pleasing element in.  It just doesn't feel like there's any love in the film.  Most amazingly of all is that some of the SFX even looks ropey.  This is most clear during the open-ground battle sequence where the Dwarfs are chased by Orcs riding wolves, I'm sure that you can see where the animals have been computer generated.

Overall the film is visually stunning in places, but it's way too bloated and vast to hold my interest for nearly 3 hours.  There was nothing here that made me think I'm be queuing up to watch part 2 come December this year.