Not all that good

Rating: 4/10 (13 January 2013)

The Hobbit is a really good story, but what is it about a director who cannot even get the rhetoric of storytelling right, when the material is there already in the book. This is a real pity. Most of the story takes place on the road, but it felt more as if battles took up the bulk of it.
The worst thing about this film, was battle scene after battle scene, with audio so deafening, that despite the fact I blocked my ears with my hands through most of the film, my ears were ringing all that evening. I felt like suing the cinema and film company for aural damage.
All the battle scenes were the same intensity. In the book, a little altercation with Orcs became a major scene, and these were reworked ad infinitum. So many things were missing from the actual story, for instance, the spiders lair. The Golem scenes were good, but there should have been subtitles for the riddle sequence, as sometimes the speech was so indistinct with all the hissing and spluttering.
The scenes looked much more artificial than in the Lord of the Rings series, and the matte painting of Rivendell really looked flat. I noted that there was no expense spared in the making of this film. How much more difficult would it have been (and perhaps even cheaper) to go for less of the effects and more of the atmosphere the original story conveyed.
The music was top notch, and the theme was lovely, including the folkish song which was really ingenuous. Also excellent, was the dwarfs plainchant in the beginning. Well done composers, choristers and musicians.