Middle Earth-Fast Food without lasting impressions

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2012)

I went to see the hobbit with mixed expectations. The trailer for this movie had gotten me really excited but I knew, that if I expected to see another masterpiece like the Lord of The Rings Trilogy I would probably be disappointed.
Now, I'll try to do this without giving away the plot of the movie. Which might be hard, considering the amount of actual 'plot' in this movie could be fit into the length of a simpsons episode.
Basically, the dwarfs try to take back their home and bilbo joins them on their journey to their former hometown.
From there on out, the group just seems to stumble from one bad situation into another, without much consistency or purpose. Things in this movie just.... happen. And that's fine I guess, as long as you don't ask any questions about it. Questions like: 'Where are we?', 'What are we doing here?', 'Who is this person?', 'Why does a goblin-king do belly dancing?'
Now you don't HAVE to ask these questions and just enjoy the movie for the action-overload it is. But then, you could be watching pretty much any action movie out there. Preferably one, that's not split into three parts and has a conclusive ending unlike this film.
Now there are one or two emotional moments in the story, that will actually grip you and have you waiting for more. But the movie won't wait long before swapping out interesting conflicts and characters with over the top action scenes.
The other really annoying parts about The Hobbit are the unfinished plot arcs. There's 3 main plot arcs in this movie and none of them are finished within the more than two hours runtime.
All in all, The Hobbit feels a lot like a standard Hollywood action-flick. Only that those movies usually don't require you to come back two times in order to see how they end.