Over Hill And Under Hill

Rating: 7/10 (30 November 2014)

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit from the peaceful Shire. One day, twelve dwarfs and a wizard called Gandalf show up at his door and almost before he knows it he's off on a dangerous quest to steal some gold from a dragon who lives under a mountain ...
This beautiful adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic children's adventure story, made by the same team as the epic The Lord Of The Rings movies from eleven years earlier, is just as visually dazzling, lovingly crafted and wildly imaginative as its grand predecessors. It even begins with a prologue set during the opening of the previous films, featuring Holm and Wood as Bilbo and Frodo, which looks as fresh as if it were shot during the originals. Jackson steps back into the world of Middle-earth with a sure hand, maintaining just the right balance of consistency and atmosphere, combined with the telling of a very different and more intimate story. The Hobbit is a simpler, more whimsical tale, with just one plot thread, far fewer characters and more emphasis on humour, and the cast are all excellent. Freeman captures Bilbo's innate fussiness and irritability, and the conflict between this and his desire to go adventuring, while the actors playing the dwarfs manage the tricky task of making their characters distinct and memorable. McKellen is the key link to the previous adventures and steps back into the frame with aplomb, while Serkis as usual steals the movie as Gollum in the classic Riddles In The Dark sequence. By using all the key technicians again - especially composer Howard Shore, cameraman Andrew Lesnie, and effects/makeup/costumes/props designer Richard Taylor - the movie has quality and continuity assured, and is fun, fresh, dramatic and exciting from start to finish. I'm afraid I must however comment on something fundamental which bothers me - the tone. In my view the film tries very hard to be as similar as possible to The Lord Of The Rings, and I'd guess this was at the insistence of the financiers. It does this several ways; by simply being long (the novel of The Hobbit is about a quarter of the length of The Lord Of The Rings), by constructing expansive sequences from nothing (for example, the Rock Giants scene is a lengthy and expensive looking section in the film but a throwaway sentence in the book), by creating deliberate links (such as the meeting with Saruman and Galadriel, which is a fabrication for the movie), and, worst of all, by altering the fabric of the plot in unjustifiable ways. The pale orc antagonist character, Azog, and the revenge plot which accompanies him, is complete invention, most likely to justify lengthy and bloody action sequences which play no part in the novel. This is odd for a movie which does such a good job of faithfully creating Tolkien's world - for example, the opening dinner scene is a near perfect recreation of the book's opening chapter. Bilbo doesn't rescue Thorin at any point in the novel and they don't have any emotional reconciliations either. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking the story of The Hobbit could easily be told in one solid two-hour movie, and that all of the expensive embellishment is perhaps chiefly to ensure patrons purchase three tickets. I don't want to be cynical or judgemental though - whatever the movie's aims or production history, it is exquisitely made, fantastic entertainment, and a definitive version of one of the most influential adventure stories ever written.