Soulless commercial ride on the Hollywood roller-coaster

Rating: 1/10 (25 December 2012)

THE QUALITY OF THE FILM Imagine "Spy Kids" with elements of Tolkien's writing. Technological demonstration, a large budget at the hands of a tasteless creative group. The CG animation of trolls was almost as ugly as in the Lord of the Rings. The only reason of making it 3D was making me cope with the uncomfortably of 3D. The dwarf parcour and scenes copied from the Lord of the Rings (compare the fight of Thorin and Azog with that of Isildur and Sauron), artificially added action-scenes and castrated non-action scenes spoke of lazy, commercial, mainstream work. Radagast's animal companions were Walt Disney's "Snow-white" bad.
THE PLOT The poor novella (yep, Lord of the Rings is a novel trilogy, The Hobbit - only a small novella, yet both amount a trilogy of films) was so stretched out that the original and added material could be equal to each other. And whatever was taken from the book, was mutilated for reasons unknown: in the book, Azog is a goblin, not an orc, and is killed by Dain, not Thorin, and his son Bolg replaced him in Moria. The "stone giants" are only a dwarf legend about thunder. Radagast isn't a main character in any Tolkien work I know, because he doesn't give a damn about the wars of humans, elves and the rest. The Dol Guldur conflict and the ousting of the Necromancer actually has nothing to do with "The Hobbit". There is no toilet humor in the scene with trolls - in the book, Gandalf gives the trolls advice in troll voice, makes them change their mind so many times that dawn comes. In the movie - a troll blows his nose on Bilbo, then Bilbo starts a lecture on tapeworms. An awful lot of cliché ("NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!", "I'm sure we're through the worst" *Dumb Dumb Dumb* DRAGON'S WOKEN UP!!!). It was made so it would please a diaper-wearing kid, but don't make them sad. I hate the tragic scene->happy end formula, which was abused, raped, killed, buried, taken out of the grave, raped again in this film.
THE HEROES The heroes were lacking any defining traits so intense in the book. Only a Hollywood template - smart-mouthed guys with tactless jokes. They were given one-liners/catchphrases to define them instead. It wasn't always easy to see the difference between certain dwarfs and the Great Goblin. In the book dwarfs are polite, but dry and greedy. In the book - kind-hearted heroic men, a bit stubborn, and loving to troll people now and then. Bilbo's not a conservative gentleman hobbit, who gets carried away by his curiosity for adventure, but a timid teenager. Gandalf isn't a powerful mage, but a well-informed homeless guy, Radagast is another one, and a schizophrenic in addition. Might as well fit in in Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King" (awesome movie btw). Actually, there was no Bilbo character at all: there was a combined character of Frodo, Sam, Mery, Pin from LOTR.
Verdict - if you want Tolkien, read the book. The movie isn't worth watching even once.