Beautiful but disappointing.

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2012)

This is my first time reviewing a movie here on IMDb, and the main reason is this: Though overall a good movie, some aspects of it left me deeply unsatisfied. I just want to share a little bit of why I was disappointed. Even though it is extremely unlikely that my opinion have any influence over the two following installments, being silent completely eliminates the possibility. The review may contain minor spoilers, so read at your own risk.
So, let's start with the good things about this movie: It is extremely well done technically and artistically. The landscapes, props, costumes and camera work is absolutely fantastic. The movie delivers absolutely stunning environments, way more realistic and detailed than LOTR. The music is good and the overall feeling is great. The acting was good in my opinion, and the dwarfs were humorous, yet not to the extent of becoming silly. This was one of the big reliefs for me, as I expected all dwarfs except Thorin to be clowns - After all, we all saw what Peter Jackson did to Gimli in LOTR. If it weren't for the criticism I am going to post below, I would give this movie a 9/10.
And here are the things that I disliked: The movie started good, but during the second half, things turned ugly. - The situations sometimes become totally absurd. The characters falls down great heights, get trapped on a rock giants leg and gets stuck in a "rain of boulders". And no one gets hurt. It seems like all of this is only created to maximize the use of special effects. It adds nothing to the story. The result, for me, was a total lack of tension, as I got the impression that the characters were immortal anyway, so why worry? The amount of impossible action sequences was just too large for this movie to be taken seriously. And then, in the middle of all this, the cheesiest comic relief I have ever seen is delivered. Embarrassing. Also I have a great problem with the way small things in scenes are changed, only making the movie worse than the book. The LOTR was also filled with these changes, which ruined parts of the last two movies for me, as I had the bad judgment of reading the books first. I also think that the movie was too long. If some of the pointless action scenes were removed, it would have been a much better movie overall.
Hopefully the upcoming two movies will be better. An Unexpected Journey had the potential of becoming a fantastic movie. In my opinion it failed. So please, regarding the following movies, lets not ruin them with idiotic action sequences like "legolas skating down a stair on a shield while shooting his bow" in The Two Towers, or "Trolls delivering cheesy one-liners before dying" in The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey.
And yes, I have read the books, several times.
7/10