Decent, but fails to capture the book's spirit

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2012)

Managed to see the film in 3D and High Frame Rate 48 FPS. The 3D was fine, but the 48FPS was awful. I won't say it ruined the film, because that's not fair. But it was far more noticeable than it should've been. At times things looked like they were moving far too fast. It felt like watching an American soap opera in the middle of the day. Best way I can put it. I'd read that the CGI was looking awful because of it, but I didn't really notice that. However if they want 48FPS to be the way of the future, CGI has to take several big steps forward. It's not up to that level yet. The Great Goblin (Barry Humpheries) comes too mind, it looked like CGI whereas in 24FPS they've got that down pat looking basically lifelike.
The film as a whole was all a bit meh. It felt like Jackson was trying to turn it into an epic, LOTR style film. Which The Hobbit isn't. I can only repeat words that many others have already used: Bloated, slow, overly drawn out. The scenes with old Bilbo and Frodo at the start (very start, no spoilers here) felt far longer than they needed to. The book starts with Bilbo meeting Gandalf, whereas in the film it took maybe 10- 15 minutes to get there. Felt like it was trying to emulate the prologue opening of LOTR. We could've had Thorin explain it later in the film, and would've been more effective in my opinion. Perhaps at that first camping scene?
Martin Freeman was brilliant, Richard Armitage was really good as Thorin. Ian McKellen was...Ian McKellen. But it just didn't have that sense of fun and adventure that The Hobbit book had. All throughout the movie there was this overwhelming sense of "Shit's about to get messed up", whereas in the book it had Bilbo's attitude of "Gonna get some gold, why not?".
It was okay, but so far it's the Jan Brady of the LOTR series. However, worth seeing solely for Martin Freeman.