* – This receives a “Worth Seeing” rating if you’re familiar with The Lord of the Rings and a Tolkien diehard like I was from age 12-14, meaning you’ve read The Silmarillion. The average movie-goer might have his/her patience really tried sitting through what is only part one of another trilogy.
The book has been around since 1937, there was a cartoon version made in the Seventies by Rankin Bass (saw it when it debuted!), some middle and high schools have students read it alongside other classic staples and Rings had key part of Hobbit in the opening exposition. So unless you’ve been living under a rock, there aren’t any spoilers in this review since most educated people know how the story goes.
Overall it’s an impressive event movie but that’s also its problem, the source material didn’t have much to go on to make three films thus Jackson pads it out with material from The Silmarillion. For the fan in me, hooray! Radagast the Brown is an actual character played by Sylvester McCoy (aka the Seventh Doctor), not some quick mention by Gandalf. The other part of me who has to interact with the straights (a joke from my friend Steve Bryant) thought here’s what the general reactions will be…number one, and this one from 2009 I have always loved because it did the opposite for the fan base. The whole story could be told effectively as long movie of say 150 minutes, not three pushing the same duration.
The other gripe is the movie’s tone. The Hobbit succeeded as a young-adult novel due to its pace and straightforward storytelling. I read it the entire thing over Thanksgiving Break 1981. I remember not being able to put it down. When I tried to read The Fellowship of the Ring a couple weeks later, it was such a chore to get through, I wondered if these were written by the same author. Jackson takes Hobbit‘s plot and makes it Rings‘ prequel, bludgeoning the audience with guest appearances which never happened in the novel. Before you “correct” me by saying, “The Hobbit is the prequel to The Lord of the Rings.” No, Rings is the sequel to Hobbit and Tolkien didn’t write the latter book anticipating a franchise. He definitely tried to retrofit stuff afterwards through Silmarillion. My point is Jackson made Hobbit heavier than it needed to be and it comes off as his Phantom Menace.
Do I hate it? No. I enjoyed the hell out of it. I nodded off during the riddles between Bilbo and Gollum since it is a slow part. My complaints are concerns on how all this extra material feels more like padding. Jackson has done this before with his version of King Kong. I thought he learned his lesson then with how more becomes less.
Fans. Go. You will anyway. Non-fans, you’ve been warned. I plan to see it again with Somara but in 3-D or 3-D with 48 frames per second.
Hobbit is mandatory at Alamo. There three dining features for the movie. I ate two, the sandwich and dessert. The pre-show entertainment had Ricky Gervais’ audition with Ian McKellan from some show I didn’t recognize; a Flight of the Conchords music video, Hugh Jackman stuff (no idea why); MTV Movie Awards’ bit with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn; some of the Rankin Bass cartoon.
The Ricky Gervais show is Extras. Very good, in my opinion…err “Worth Seeing.”