Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (28 November 2014)

I had been very much looking forward to The Hobbit.
Let's start with some blasphemy first: I don't really like Tolkien much. I refer to him as the Charles Dickens of fantasy fiction, and that is *not* meant as a compliment. I don't question his ability to write, or his importance to the genre, but great googly-moogly, I don't need every leaf in the forest described for me any more than I need the details of every cobble in the streets of Victorian London.
The parallel with Dickens is even closer -- both writers have produced one book I love: 'A Christmas Carol' for Dickens, and 'The Hobbit' for Tolkien. They *were* both capable of writing a story that didn't digress all over the world... they just generally didn't.
So while I haven't seen the whole LoTR trilogy due to a complete lack of interest, I was very interested in The Hobbit, especially when I heard Martin Freeman would be Bilbo.
Freeman has rapidly turned into the greatest everyman actor of our time. He was the best part of the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, he's the best Dr. Watson since Michael Williams on the BBC Radio 4 adaptations, and he was unquestionably the best part of The Hobbit. He has the rare ability to snuggle down into a role and carry you along with him, making his character's experience the audience's experience.
Unfortunately, the overall experience of this episode of The Hobbit is that of an amusement park ride, rather than a story. It's weighed down with stunt casting and padding. It was great to see Sylvester McCoy (still my favorite Doctor), but Radagast's expanded presence in the story interfered rather than enhanced. I just can't buy Dame Edna as the Great Goblin, and the whole underground goblin cave sequence was nothing more than a roller coaster on film. Worst of all, on the wake of that, Bilbo's discovery of the ring comes off as trite and corny rather than critical to the overall story arc.
Sometimes padding is necessary -- 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas' would have been about an eight minute cartoon without Jones, Hague, Specter and Ogle tacking some brilliant schtick onto the story, and doing it without interfering with Dr. Seuss' original narrative.
And sometimes the padding needs to be cut away, like Jackson did with the LoTR trilogy.
Here, the padding just grinds an otherwise brilliant story to a halt, repeatedly, and it wrecked it for me. I haven't seen the second part, and I shan't see the third. I shall stay with the book.