No No No!

Rating: 1/10 (22 January 2013)

What the hell is this?
I've been looking forward to this for a long time now and last night I got the chance to see it, and was really excited. The Hobbit is a great story, albeit a short one, and its strength is in the warmth, courage and resilience of the characters. Bilbo Baggins is an everyman, who has been swept up in a dangerous adventure and has to grow and develop in order to deal with the situations he finds himself in. We can identify with him on some level, and sympathise with him when he feels lost and alone in the company of strangers. His story should resonate with us all.
What we get, however, is a crude and vulgar retelling of that story, complete with embellishments and fabrications, fart jokes and knob gags. Yes, a knob gag in a Tolkien film. That was almost enough to make we leave in itself, but I stuck it out to see if this was a one off, something to keep the adults laughing while the kids watched. But, alas, the entire movie was riddled with base humour and redundant characterisations. The dwarfs were ancillary characters (at best), with Bilbo only getting to take the lead between convoluted battle scenes, none of which I remember from the book, and even when he did take centre is was only to further the plot a little until the next MacGuffin could be inserted to facilitate yet another tedious battle scene, complete with entirely made up characters.
I don't know what this piece of crap thinks it is, but it is not The Hobbit.