overlong, stuffed the gills, occasionally truly, unabashedly great

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2014)

Originally Guillermo del Toro was supposed to direct the Hobbit series. Whether he had two or three films at the time he was in pre-production is uncertain, but he still retains a co-writing credit on the scripts. His presence, I think, can be most felt in this film, An Unexpected Journey, which also takes the most from JRR Tolkien's original book of the title. His sense of grandeur and love for creatures - unique, big, small, darker and more disgusting and 'out-there', the better, which I'm sure jived with Peter Jackson's tastes - is there big and large here, and it helps in moments... and perhaps detracts in others when things go on, and on, and on.
Now that the trilogy is complete, I can look back on this first film and see that there was actually a lot that was good about it, at least in the sense of kicking off this new series of films starring that Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman, arguably the reason if nothing else to see the movie as it's a tremendous performance for all of the little moments and gestures he gets right). Bilbo is a stubborn little guy, though not as much as the dwarfs who crash his house to eat and inform him - via Gandalf the Grey and Thorin Oakenshield, a son of a departed king - that he is to go on a journey to help them get back their gold and kingdom from a diabolical dragon named Smaug.
Of course, this was originally a children's book - not three separate ones like LOTR, just one, and the first version was not as complex as it later became with rewrites and reissues - and here it gets puffed up to unimaginable heights. Though shortened and imperfect, a 1977 animated film got the whole story in under 90 minutes. Ironic that Jackson's 'Rings' series was the best criticism of the Bakshi adaptation, where now it's reversed. His film is loaded with action and adventure, some of it well choreographed, scary, exciting, deranged, and just... long. And, as with a lot of franchises (including Star Wars) things have to tie together, even if inorganically. Hence you get appearances from Christopher Lee and Cate Blanchett (albeit as actors they're never unwelcome, just sad it's this dragging material) as characters not in the book, only to serve as connecting tissue for the "Larger" threat that is really in the background of a tale of a little hobbit and the dwarfs.
The film is the definition of hit or miss, and when it misses, such as an overbearing climax that just feels too BIG for its britches, giving a massive dose of epic battle to something that isn't that big, it's a lot to bear. But when it hits, I hasten to say it was almost (not quite, but almost) worth it for Jackson to come back to this series. The highlight above all else is Bilbo's 'Riddles in the Dark' with Gollum. Though the visual effects were astonishing and groundbreaking with him years ago, here they've gotten *better* and, in just once scene, we get so much from this character all over again - a showstopper, naturally for Andy Serkis in the best possible way, playing it for comedy, tragedy, horror, everything you dig about this character - that it's a reminder how much character is paramount in these types of films. You can have all the sweeping shots of New Zealand and characters running this way and that and CGI monsters and peril... but two people having a conflict over a piece of gold is much, much more intriguing.
Indeed that one scene is a 10/10. But there's too much 'filler', so to speak, scenes that drag and characters who either have too much backstory (Thorin, the a-hole of the series and the kind of co-protagonist with Bilbo) or not enough. I enjoyed Unexpected Journey, maybe, just barely, the most out of all these new releases. But the lack of a consistent tone - some things played for much broader comedy than anything in Lord of the Rings, some things so dark that they nearly become comical, and action that feels like it's still going even after the movie ends - I don't know. It's a film where you can feel brilliance and mediocrity fighting one another.