It's Like the First Part of a 9-Hour Short Film

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2012)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the extremely highly anticipated prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is the first part of the story of Bilbo "the Dildo" Baggins, and how he helped the dwarfs reclaim their city from the dragon Smaug.
I do like the original trilogy. I think it's a well put together series of films that can sometimes be really epic. So I was looking forward to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Now did it live up to my expectations. No. It disappointed me. A lot.
The movie feels extremely drawn out. I kept thinking the entire time for almost every single scene in this movie that "this scene could've been shortened by many minutes". I mean, let's think about it: It's a children's book only with around 300 pages, and it's being adapted into three movies that last about 3 hours each! And for that reason, The Hobbit's length feels so forced. It seems like the entire movie could've been done in an hour or even just 30 minutes. The dialogue just seems to have been stretched so far. I'm betting the writers were extremely bored with writing this movie, because it's all so dull.
On the good side of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the special effects are absolutely incredible! The sets, locations, characters and action scenes look so good! The movie also does a good job on recreating a lot of the same elements from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
And the best scene in the movie is the one with Gollum. That was great.
I saw the movie with 48fps, and I gotta say that I'd really like it if 48fps replaced 3D as a visual gimmick in the theaters. Because it makes the movie more immersive and the action scenes more fun to watch. The 3D is also good, but nothing special.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is disappointing. It's way too long compared to the story it's telling (which also isn't very interesting to begin with), most of the characters are forgettable and while the visuals are good, the CGI characters go a bit overboard. I mean, the Orcs in The Lord of the Rings looked way better than the ones in this. But the visuals and nostalgia factors make the movie tolerable. Overall, it's OK.