Film Review - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

The Hobbit is director Peter Jackson's long awaited prequel to his Lord of the Rings trilogy and like those films is based on the book by Professor JRR Tolkien, this story sees Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) who never went for an adventure, but an invitation from Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) may see him go on the adventure of a lifetime.

I went into the Hobbit with a mixed sense of expectations, having read the book about a decade ago and knowing that it would be nothing like the Rings book at all and that it was much more of a children's tale, so could Jackson restrain himself for this time around?

Well, yes and no would answer that question and there is certainly a lot here that I really liked, the performances by Freeman and Richard Armitage, Howard Shore's majestic and beautiful score, the visual effects work, the cinematography and the humorous script which for me nicely reflected the chid like tone of the book as did the moments of the Riddle Game and the "Misty Mountains Cold" both of which I thought were beautifully made and the highlights of the movie.

But yet for all of this, it did become a bit too much after a while of endless shots of cameras swooping around the beautiful NZ countryside and armies of Goblins enveloping the Dwarves and giant Trolls threatening to swallow them whole with spicy seasoning, I have to admit that I got a bit bored with that as I did with the finales to both the Dark Knight Rises and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Despite that though, I did enjoy the Hobbit and found it a lot more fun than I thought I would but if you aren't a fan of the fantasy genre or the previous Lord of the Rings movies then there is little here that will sway that opinion, 3 out of 5.