Watchable in its own right, but it's also padded out and far too long

Rating: 5/10 (11 February 2018)

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is selected by Gandalf as the 14th member of his team and is tasked with assisting a group of dwarves to reclaim their home Lonely Mountain. Baggins is initially reluctant to help, but does prove his worth and eventually wins over a group of rather sceptical dwarves...
Many other people have probably eluded to the fact that it was going to be a tough task for Jackson to replicate the success of The Lord Of The Rings. Even going in with expectations of it being not as good (which it wasn't), it still wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped it would be...
The Lord Of The Rings films were long films, but in fairness I didn't really notice the time passing by when watching the original trilogy. Sadly that isn't the case here; the set-up to the story here goes on far too long and starts to grate after a while - I realise that some set-up is necessary, but if I'm not mistaken it's getting close to the hour mark before they even embark on their journey. The whole set-up with the dwarves arriving at Baggins house, goofing around and p***ing him off was mildly amusing, but again it was overdone and dragged on for too long.
Perhaps that's the problem with this film - it felt like Jackson didn't really have the material to stretch the film to its 'epic' length of just under 3 hours so he just torturously padded the whole film out. Another example of this is Bilbo Baggins encounter with Gollum - yes it's necessary to the story, but again their 'riddling' battle of wits and Baggins playing hide and seek with Gollum whilst invisible seemed to be a long-winded and elaborate way of showing how Baggins acquired the ring.
I also felt that the film didn't have much narrative structure or shape and Jackson had a tendency to dart the film in all kinds of directions which at times made the film feel a little muddled - he did this to an extent in LOTR, but it didn't feel as detrimental there as it does here.
The performances by the main cast are a mixed bunch; McKellen is always good value and does an excellent job again. The likes of Hugo Weaving and Christopher Lee are solid in supporting roles. Freeman isn't quite as good as many of the other cast members, but does an OK job.
Overall then The Hobbit is an OK film that is watchable, but by unnecessarily and painfully stretching the film out to nearly 3 hours in length the film does have a lot of dull stretches meaning that a lot of viewer patience will be required in order to endure it in its entirety.