Like butter scraped over too much bread

Rating: 5/10 (10 October 2013)

Let me point out that I really wanted to like this movie. I am a big fan of the LotR movie trilogy and of Tolkiens books in general, but my disappointment with this movie does not come from the fact that it is different from the book.
I've tried watching this movie several times, after I first saw it in theaters, and each time I barely make it past the introduction. It is not because I feel that it goes too slowly, in fact I rather like "slow movies", the problem I have with it is the lack of content it brings.
The book was a pretty short book and this is very evident in this, the first of three (!) movies based on it. Every scene is stretched out to its limit. An example might be the almost 25 minutes we spend watching dwarfs invade poor Bilbos home at the start of the film. Most of this time is spent on eating, bad jokes, juggling plates and telling the story that we already saw in the introduction. Perhaps that story could have been told there instead of at the introduction, but then the introduction would not have been as good. Or maybe much of this scene, along with the backgrounds of the different dwarfs, could have been told during the traveling scenes instead.
Then we have the effects, lovely as they might be, it feels like they made scenes and shots so that they could show off the effects. Not so that the effects could help show the story. Examples are: how much time can you spend running across bridges in the goblin caves or holding on to a cliff while the cliff fights other cliffs. The mountain giant scene is not even referred to later in the movie. It was there purely to show off effects.
But all that aside what really brings this movie down for me is how very blunt it is. Almost all of the jokes are along the lines of: Oh the fat guy is heavy or the silly wizard is silly. There is almost no point where you wonder over the motivation of someone or why things happen the way they do. It is as if there is no trust that the audience can figure things out on their own, everything is presented like a wiki-page. Where there is no mystique how can there be anticipation and interest for what is to come?
My favorite scene in the movie is not even in the book. It is the council at Rivendell. It brings so much information up about what is going on in middle earth. It gives the movie a place in the greater scheme of things. And all the time Sauroman sits there pretending to be a good guy. That scene is so very good, it shows what this movie could have been like.