“Far over the misty mountains cold / To dungeons deep and
caverns old / The pines were roaring on the height / The winds were moaning in
the night / The fire was red, it flaming spread / The trees like torches blazed
with light...”
Thorin Oakenshield (singing)
Pace; 1/2
Acting; 2/2
Aesthetic; 1/2
Originality & Intention; 1/2
Final Score; 6/10
So, I've decided this deserves a much longer review, but for now I'll settle with my usual length summary.
Final Word.; long story 'short', Jackson drops the ball. The film is overly long and strays uncomfortably between the darker tone of The Lord Of The Rings films and the more light-hearted source material. Without wishing to give away any spoilers, the polar points of this observation are 1; the brutal battle flashback between the Dwarves and the Orcs (where a significant character is decapitated, and his head tossed aside) and 2; the scene where the Dwarfs in Bilbo's home sing merrily while washing the dishes, resembling something straight from a Disney cartoon.
The CGI, while good, is overused and barely better than what has already come before. A number of subplots (taken directly from other Tolkien material, but not the actual Hobbit novel) have been shoe-horned into the narrative to better tie it into the mythos of the previous films, but only serve to confuse the story and stretch the running time.
All in all, not a disaster, but unforgivably flawed. Would have been far better served as a single film, two at the most- but hey, its good fun while its playing, and worth catching in the cinema if only for the giddy thrill of revisiting Peter Jackson's Middle Earth.
More on this to come...
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