The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - 2 1/2 smiles

As I watched (and loved) each of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, I wondered how he was going to get enough of Tolkien’s complex story into each. When I heard that he had decided to make “The Hobbit” into three movies, I wondered how he was going to stretch a fairly simple, straightforward story into three parts. Unfortunately, Jackson spends way too much time setting up characters and plots in needlessly intricate detail. Of course, there’s a lot of ‘stuff’ in this movie, all the way up to a bloated 169-minute running time. But stuff is not the same thing has having a rich and complicated plot. As a result, it can’t help but lose focus on both story and, more importantly, on its Hobbit hero, Bilbo Baggins. Much of ‘An Unexpected Journey’ focuses on the dwarves and we do not spend enough time with Bilbo. He is just there. Nonetheless, it was good to return to Middle Earth and the narrative becomes more engaging when, two-thirds of the way through, we meet an old friend, Gollum.

The script (written by Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Guillermo del Toro and J. R. R. Tolkien) doesn’t try very hard to differentiate the 13 dwarves that comprise the group Bilbo Baggins (an amiable Martin Freeman) joins. Although it seems as dwarves age, their noses grow bigger and they get more facial hair. Led by the warrior Throin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), the dwarves are on a quest to reclaim their home, Erebor, which was lost to the dragon Smaug. Since this movie is only the beginning of the tale, Bilbo and the company of dwarves is still far from their destination at the end of the film, but they are on their way. There is plenty of swordplay and action as well as Bilbo finding the One Ring, a dangerous encounter with Gollum and battles with lots and lots of goblins, wargs, trolls and other dark creatures. Unfortunately, the dwarves aren’t interesting characters. Bilbo is a solid character as is Gollum (once again played by Andy Serkis, one of the best motion-capture actors). Gollum is richer and deeper this time around as the technology has improved since the Lord of the Rings movies. Gollum‘s delightful passive-aggressive character generates much needed humor. While “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” held my attention throughout and the look of the movie is amazing, the action scenes are repetitive and there’s little forward narrative progress.  12/14/12