Really Good, But not Quite The Lord Of the Rings!

Rating: 7/10 (23 March 2013)

The Lord of the Rings movies are some of my favourite films of all time, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey comes close, but a few problems hold it back from being truly fantastic.
ACTING: 8/10
The acting from the main cast members is on par with the Lord of the Rings. Ian Mckellen is always wonderful, and Richard Armitage is fantastic as the dwarf king Thorin. Martin Freeman was very well cast as Bilbo, and he gives a lot of humanity to the film. The rest of the dwarfs are fine, however, they never really get their chance to shine as they only have a few lines each. Hopefully we will see more of the dwarfs in the next two sequels. There are a few returning cast members as well, including some big names. While their acting was good overall, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, and Ian Holm occasionally over act their parts, perhaps to make up for their lack of screen time.
WRITING: 6/10
This is where most of the problems of the film arise. The movie is too long in parts. The Old Bilbo/ Frodo scenes (while interesting) could have been trimmed, much of the unexpected party scene could have been cut (especially the first song about dishes), and the chase scene with Radagast could have been trimmed. A few of the scenes that connect the Lord of the Rings (the white council, Radagast, etc) could have been shortened. There are also a few one liners and toilet humour jokes that fall flat. Also, the film has a number of "fan boy moments" that mimic or reference the Lord of the Rings but do not progress the plot in any way. The Hobbit is a very difficult film to bring to the big screen, and overall the writers did decent job. The first part of the trilogy was always going to be the worst. I expect that the next movie will end with the destruction of Lake Town, and the third film will be a huge battle, so I have no problem with the way they decided to split the film into three parts.
DESIGN: 9/10
The design is just as good as the Lord of the Rings, which makes sense as it is the same people. The map paintings, sets, miniatures, characters, wardrobe, and weapons all look great. Some of the dwarfs look a little bit strange, however, maybe this is intentional.
EFFECTS: 8/10
Some have complained that the CGI in this movie looks fake, and I couldn't disagree more. The CGI looks fantastic, maybe better than any movie this year. There is a problem with too much CGI though. The great thing about the Lord of the Rings is that they avoided using CGI unless necessary, and used sets, prosthetics, and camera angle tricks instead. In the Hobbit, CGI is the go to method, which is unfortunate because no matter how good it is, CGI will always look worse than the real thing.
MUSIC: 7/10
The soundtrack is very similar to the Lord of the Rings, in fact, it is too similar. I loved the soundtrack the Lord of the Rings, however, the Hobbit soundtrack feels like a repeat of the same thing. There are a few new songs such as the Lonely Mountain theme, and they all sound great. I hope that Howard Shore expands on these themes and adds new ones in the next two films.
VERDICT:
This is an enjoyable film, but it never quite reaches the heights of the Lord of the Rings (except for perhaps the gollum scene). As long as people except that, there is no reason that anyone should not enjoy this movie. Overall, I give it a 7.6/10