Unexpectedly underwhelming

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2013)

I must admit that I had high hopes when I went to see The Hobbit, but with a question of how a relatively short book could be turned into 7 or so hours of film over the 3 instalments. I had fond memories of reading the book and I loved the LOTR films. Unfortunately I think the film really suffers from unnecessary padding and action scenes that just add nothing to the story. The film is a little too knowing with references to the later events of LOTR so it loses some of its innocence. The saddest thing is that the film does look great but it just seems to drag - it's overlong and really doesn't benefit from adding in additional Orc encounters or additional characters. The book in my memory is a little bit more lighthearted and innocent compared to LOTR but this gets battered by too much blood and gore. Martin Freeman does a decent job as Bilbo but he doesn't seem to have a massive range of acting skills - he's the same in The Office or Sherlock Holmes and most of the dwarfs are fairly anonymous. I couldn't call it a disaster but it does not meet the high standards of LOTR and I think the decision to go with 3 films is a massive mistake - out of them might come one decent edited version but on present evidence each instalment is going to be bloated and unsatisfying.