The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

There are a LOT of dwarves in The Hobbit.  There is Oin and Gloin, Fili and Kili, Charley and Farley, Bodie and Doyle, Tango and Cash, Eric, Derek, Leslie, Alan and Woody.

This was a problem for me in the book as well as the film.  There are so many dwarves and they all look the same and sound the same so it's hard to remember any individual one or what it is they are about.  I have the same issue with Programme Managers.

It starts amusingly enough with Bilbo's house being filled with dwarves who eat everything.  And I have to say I was totally won over by Martin Freeman who up until now I have only known as "Man Who Stars In Wildly Over-Rated Stuff".  But he is utterly charming as Bilbo and much better than Elijah Wood who also appears at the start of this film.  But then the film becomes very episodic.  For me, it felt like things were just picked up and dropped to be included in the next film.  "There's an Evil Necromancer in the woods!  Oh, never mind, he'll still be evil next Christmas..."  That sort of thing.

So this film was basically just dwarves being chased by Orcs and/or Trolls from one thing to the next.  At times it resembled a massively expensive video game with CGI characters leaping about from platform to platform.  We saw it in IMAX/3D and I was a little disappointed that Peter Jackson didn't make better use of it.  We were treated to a 10 minute preview of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" and that looked amazing in IMAX/3D - while Peter Jackson seems to limit its use to shots of dwarves hiking against mountainous backgrounds, only mixing it up with the occasional shot of a mountainous backdrop with dwarves hiking in the foreground.  Oh wait....

If I'm making the film sound bad, let me add that it is very pretty, I was never bored  and I didn't really feel the 3 hours running time too much.  However I suspect I would have enjoyed it way more if I'd seen it at home with tea breaks and naps.  Caro quite liked it, and I think that's how we all felt - a 6 out of 10 sort of film.  Inoffensive, but nowhere near as compelling as Lord of the Rings.