Enjoyed it immensely, but it's not quite on the same tier as Lord of the Rings

Rating: 8/10 (17 December 2012)

On rare occasions, I find myself getting very excited for a movie's release the moment I learn about it. The Hobbit was one of those movies for me. Finally it's come out and I got to see it after waiting for a year and a half! For the most part, I wasn't disappointed. I enjoyed almost every moment, clapped at the end with the rest of the theater, and found myself wanting to see it again afterward. By all means, I should be giving this film a big 10 out of 10, no questions asked. But, despite how much I liked it, I did see some problems.
But first, what was good about it? Well, I know that some people didn't care for it so much, but I did really enjoy the visuals of the film. I found both the set and the character designs to be delightful and, although it was a little indulgent at times, the CGI was pretty good, too. I thought that Martin Freeman did a fabulous job as Bilbo, the stubborn, grounded little hobbit that would have preferred to stay home. I found his performance to be greatly enjoyable, especially at the scene where the dwarfs arrive quite unexpectedly on his doorstep. Ian McKellan was, of course, fantastic as Gandalf. That goes without saying. Richard Armitage, although maybe not as memorable as Freeman or McKellan, made a decent Thorin. There was one random thing I was really happy to see, and that was the incorporation of two songs. There are a lot of songs in the books and I was delighted to see a couple of them make it into the film.
So where did the problems come into the film? Well... There were a couple things. First, though, I'd like to say that I'm not even going to bother comparing the book to the film. I've read the Hobbit a couple of times, but it was years ago (middle school), so I don't remember too much of the book. What I did remember from the book was done reasonably well in the film. My biggest problem with the film was the incorporation of humor. Don't get me wrong, I loved that Jackson decided to lighten the tone of the film with some jokes here and there. But unfortunately, I found it to be badly misplaced at times. The slaying of the goblin king was a good example of this. At a moment like that, the humorous line of "that'll do it" came off as just plain... corny. I also found that most of the characters, aside from Gandalf, Bilbo, and to a lesser extent Thorin, were entirely forgettable. I barely even registered their presence at times. To be fair, the company was quite large, but I still thought that I'd care about them at least a pinch more than I did. Another problem I found was that the pacing at the beginning was very, very slow, but once the adventure got rolling, I had no problem.
Overall, I really enjoyed the film despite its shortcomings. I would go see it again.
8 out of 10