Nothing more than a long and boring picture book.

Rating: 6/10 (14 December 2012)

I had high hopes for The Hobbit, after Peter Jackson, Warner Bros, and the NZ government sold off our labour laws for this $540,000,000 monster. Alas I was met with disappointment. For a start the 48fps made everything look false, ultimately giving off the sheen of a Syfy movie. It also exposed the overacting/movement of Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman, and dodgy polystyrene set pieces. The problem with stretching out a book as small as The Hobbit into three long films is stretching out the content. It felt like I was watching the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Hobbtannica) there was a lot of information we really didn't need to know. Nothing was left to the imagination and the bombardment of information, which did very little to progress any sense of plot or storyline, became very boring. While the songs were great (minus the repetitive score), the cheesy and usually pointless dialogue had me shaking my head. Andy Serkis as Gollum seems to bring the only sense of saviour to this film and I struggle to see how the next two will cope without him (if he isn't in them). Overall the humour was childish, It was boring despite being action packed, and I can't see this franchise sustaining my attention for the next two films. However I must say Weta Digital have done an outstanding job on the visual effects as always.