Might have been an excellent film

Rating: 6/10 (28 December 2012)

... if only it had not tried to blow a wonderful, short and sweet children's book up into an LOTR-style epic. While the commercial rationale for this explosion seems unfortunately clear enough, what was an adequate formula for Tolkien's epic of epics, which at the source is already a massive and dense trilogy, just doesn't cut it for the Hobbit. Indeed, it speaks for Jackson's undoubted genius that in spite of this formula for unmitigated disaster he still produced a film somewhat worth seeing.
Some scenes such as the initial visit of the dwarfs are great, not to speak of the encounter with Gollum. All the makings of a great film are there. A true pity that Jackson did not opt to go for that one great film instead of three mediocre ones...