Better advice: Save the money and see it in 2D (or don't bother at all).
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012)
Directed by Peter
Jackson
New Line Cinema/MGM,
169 mins. PG-13 (for beheaded orcs)
* *
I devoured everything J. R. R. Tolkien ever wrote about
Middle Earth (including The Silmarillion)
and I’m also a fan of Peter Jackson’s Lord
of the Rings films (one of the few DVD sets I actually own). For
filmmakers, though, prequels are tricky business. Just ask George Lucas, whose
three Star Wars prequels failed to
generate the enthusiasm of parts IV, V, and VI, which were released nearly two
decades earlier. Peter Jackson is the latest director to toss aside caution,
and perhaps he shouldn’t have done so. Although The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, part one of his three-part
adaptation of Tolkien’s 1937 novel, is cleaning up at the box office, it’s no Lord of the Rings. In fact, it’s not a
very good film at all. Unless Jackson has something quite different in the can
for parts two and three, it’s hard to imagine that the critical reviews of part
one will help the box office for what comes next.
The first problem is one of padding. The Hobbit was a single contained book of just 388 pages. In order
to make this into a trilogy, Jackson has added touches from other Tolkien
writings on Middle Earth. Alas, much of this material is for devotees only, the
sort of hardcore stuff that’s analogous to inventing an entire Klingon language
for Star Trek über fans. You will,
for instance, be introduced to twelve dwarves–too many for most viewers to
absorb and more than anyone needs to know about. The salient fact is that they
are a small band intent upon restoring Erebor, the dwarf kingdom conquered by
the dragon Smaug. So let’s just form the fellowship and move on, shall we?
Jackson doesn’t. He opens with a sequel to his prequel–an
aged Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) busily finishing the memoir of his youthful
adventure–The Hobbit–for his nephew
Frodo before he disappears from The Shire. Sound familiar? It’s taken from The Fellowship of the Ring, part one of
the Lord of the Rings (LOR) trilogy. Finally we flash back in
time and see Gandalf (Ian McKellen) attempting to convince a youthful and
reluctant Bilbo (Martin Freeman) to forsake his comfortable hobbit home and
stuffed larder to undertake an adventure.
Soon we encounter the film’s second problem: tone. LOR was fantasy for older readers, but The Hobbit was originally meant for
children. So how does one target the film? As the opening drama for what is
ultimately a grander one, or as a cartoonish children’s story? Jackson tries to
have it both ways and it doesn’t work. He introduces Bilbo to the dwarves by
having them invade his home and clear out his well-stocked pantry in a
hedonistic evening of gluttony, drunkenness, and burping. I wondered if Terry
Gilliam co-directed, as these scenes played as they were outtakes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The
dwarves are supposed to be fierce fighters, but our first impression of the
barrel-chested, pint-sized sons of Erebor is that they are a cross between Snow
White’s companions and The Three Stooges (x4).
Equally trite is the story of Gandalf’s wizard colleague
Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), the protector of Mirkwood. He’s St.
Francis by way Dr. Doolittle and a Summer of Love acid test. He tends a forest
of cute animals including–and I kid you not–a team of speedster rabbits that
pull his land sledge at rocket velocity.
Then we get more padding, including a trip to Rivendell to
meet the elves and experience the enchantments of Galadriel (Cate Blanchett).
What isn’t padding or background is wall-to-wall ambushes and battle scenes.
Pick your Middle Earth villains–trolls, goblins, wargs, orcs–and they are all
here, including the Pale One, a mutant super orc thought to have been mortally
wounded by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) after the orc killed his
grandfather.
The battle scenes are spectacular, but they also flunk the
plausibility test, even for sci-fi and fantasy. It’s easy to see why the LOR
fellowship will ultimately triumph over evil–any dark power that relies upon
orcs and goblins for its army is doomed to fail. They are so inept that, in one
scene, our Erebor-bound band of 14 manages to rout thousands of them in a
single go on their own home turf! An
Unexpected Journey only takes us to Bilbo’s discovery of the ring, his
first encounter with Gollum (Andy Sirkis), and a draw showdown with the Pale
One. Quite a bit remains, and we didn’t really get a lot of story for a nearly
three-hour-long film.
So how about the cool special effects? These and the battle
scenes are often thrilling, but so too are car chases in run-of-the-mill mob
films that induce similar sensations for far less money. Plus, we’ve already
seen these in LOR. What about the 3D?
My advice: don’t bother. It’s nothing you’ve not already seen in other 3D
movies and the glasses dramatically darken the picture. Rivendell should be
viewed in full light. It is a CGI marvel of the first magnitude. (I can attest
from experience that the few bits of actual New Zealand landscape for Rivendell
come from one of the most nondescript parks in the entire country!) How about the acting? McKellen and
Sirkis are fine, but they could do Gandalf and Gollum in their sleep and
sometimes do. Freeman is easily the best thing in the movie, but even he has
trouble redeeming some of the paste-up performances from the dwarves. And, if I
might, Armitage’s portrayal of Thorin Oakenshield is particularly wooden!
In all, not a promising start, though I suppose we can thank
Jackson for not tossing in any Jar-Jar Binks characters. The tale will
continue. But should it? Sometimes it’s best to rest on one’s laurels. --Rob Weir
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