Review: The Hobbit

BY BLUE KAUFMAN

After months of delays, The Hobbit (the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy) finally hit theaters on December 14th. The Middle Earth-set film grossed over $150 million in the month of December and continues to dominate movie theaters across the world. However, while The Hobbit has unsurprisingly made director Peter Jackson a whole lot richer, he has also gambled with his reputation as a director and somewhat betrayed his Lord of the Rings legacy. Of course fans aren’t going to admit to it. (I don’t want to admit to it either), but The Hobbit was a colossal letdown.

Being a LTR fan myself, I had high hopes for the film. Unfortunately now, after I’ve seen it, it pains me to say that The Hobbit truly was an unexpected journey, and a disappointing one at that. Halfway through watching the film I realized why the Hobbit was so sluggish. Compared to Frodo and the ring, there’s so much less at stake in the tale of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) along with Gandalf (Ian Mckellen) as they journey to the lonely mountain. Despite the fact that the two are completely different plots, Jackson gives The Hobbit the same shadowy and sinister tone as found in the Rings Trilogy. The bottom line is that The Hobbit is a children’s book, an adventure story with dragons and dwarves, yet the film seems to be dripping with impending death and destruction, which is misplaced.

This prequel isn’t necessarily bad, it just lacked the excitement the audience expected. Regrettably, it was not for lack of effort. Repetitive and pointless action sequences devour an already bloated runtime in a bleak jumble of over the top CGI. Ponderously laying foundation for future events, the story lacked the intrigue that the audience so desperately yearned for. The remainder of the movie was given over to dwarfish bluster and feeble attempts at humor, which were exceptionally lame and endlessly unfunny.

Despite being almost three hours long and only following the plot from the book up to chapter to seven, The Hobbit is muddled and confusing. I often found myself asking simple questions like who, what, how, and why about the basic plot. I’m sure if I read the book again many of these questions could be answered, but that’s not the point. I paid $ 10 to watch a movie, not to recall and visualize details from a novel I read in middle school. As Bilbo would put it in The Fellowship of the Ring, The Hobbit was “Like butter spread over too much bread”

Still, the film did have some redeeming factors. McKellen delivered a striking performance and Gollum (voiced by Andy Serkis) was as unsettling and menacing as ever. The effects were certainly impressive and the movie even managed to sputter into life in the last 20 minutes, but all of this was still not enough to make up for the rest of the deficient plot. In reality the Hobbit is similar to a rhinestone – full of flash but lacking in substance.