Seriously. I know that male-dominated movies are kinda the norm, but you have FIFTEEN FUCKING MAIN CHARACTERS and not a SINGLE ONE is female? Who the hell wrote this? Anyway:

1. Yeah, okay, it was alright.
2. Easily the most disappointing movie of the year.

Allow me to explain.

I didn’t go into this film with incredibly high expectations. They were reasonably high, because I respect Peter Jackson as a filmmaker and know that he very talented. However, compared to the utter frenzy that I had built myself into for each of the three Lord of the Rings movies, I was pretty laid-back. I didn’t even attend the midnight premiere, opting to go the next day.

In fact, due to some misgivings about the somewhat childish, cartoonish plot elements ofThe Hobbit, it’s hard to imagine that my expectations could have been any lower. I’d hoped that the sillier bits would be eliminated, and some of them were, thankfully (Elves singing in Rivendell, for example), and the story would be adapted to translate better to the screen.

It wasn’t – or, at least, not particularly well.

My biggest complaint about the film is that it simply feels bloated. Unsurprising, considering the moronic decision to expand things to three films. The running time is 2 hours 49 minutes and I’m confident they could have cut a solid 20 minutes of footage and made a considerably better film. The entire beginning with Bilbo was cute enough, with a few amusing references  to Lord of the Rings, and it was impressive to see how well the 48fps showed that all the makeup in the world cannot make Ian Holm and Elijah Wood look twelve years younger, but from a storytelling perspective it was entirely irrelevant and bogged down the beginning. Open with the Erebor backstory and cut straight over to Gandalf showing up at Bilbo’s doorstep.

My second-biggest complaint was how competent the Dwarves are. It’s a problem they inherited from the book, unfortunately, and I was hoping that Peter Jackson would creatively work on eliminating it. See, Lord of the Rings pretty much set up all of our heroes as unstoppable killing machines while (most) Orcs are incompetent, but have strength in numbers. And I honestly don’t have a problem with that, it’s internally consistent and logical. However, The Hobbit requires our troop of Dwarves to switch back and forth between being wildly incompetent and unstoppable killing machines. There’s a long, creative chase scene where they run their asses off trying to avoid a group of Wargs, because apparently the Wargs will destroy them if they get caught. Of course, every time a Warg or two get close enough they dispatch it without a problem. So why, exactly, are they afraid of the Wargs in the first place? Stop, set up your defense, and make mincemeat out of them like you CLEARLY FUCKING SHOW YOU ARE CAPABLE OF.

Speaking of which, another thing about that scene.

• Radagast: I’ll draw the wargs off!
• Thorin: Great plan! Let’s run in the same fucking direction, thus negating any reason you would have for “drawing the Wargs off”.
• Radagast: Gotcha covered!

This continues a bit later when they’re captured by Orcs. They fall through the floor and would probably be stunned and theoretically able to be disarmed so they’re grabbed by the Orcs, disarmed, and not tied up. Apparently the dwarves suffer from the classic Standard Female Grab Area symptom, where if they’re held by the upper arm, they then become completely helpless and unable to do anything – for example, knocking the Orcs unconscious with a single punch, which they demonstrate they are easily able to do a bit later, and grabbing their weapons back. They all remain completely helpless for awhile until Gandalf teleports into the mountain and does a FLASH attack, thus momentarily stunning the Orcs. The Dwarves grab their weapons and just like that, back to unstoppable killing machines.

And honestly, this is ridiculous easy to fix. Have them be chained/tied up, then resolve the problem a couple of easy ways:

• Gandalf frees them with Glamdring (as he does in the book)
• Show a few scenes of the Dwarves surreptitiously pulling out concealed lockpicks, files, knives, etc and carefully freeing themselves while the Great Goblin is monologuing.

It’s not rocket science. And not doing it is just lazy storytelling.

My third-biggest complaint was Radagast, who I hated. He didn’t add anything to the story that couldn’t have been accomplished another, better way, and I have no interest in watching a wizard nurse a hedgehog back to health with bird shit caked on the side of his face.

Also, he rides on a sleigh that is pulled by a team of rabbits.

Let me repeat that.

Radagast rides on a sleigh that is pulled by a team of rabbits.

There have been some admittedly cheesy and somewhat stupid moments that have happened throughout all these films. This one surpasses all of them, pulling me right out of the movie and reminding me that I am sitting in a theatre, watching The Hobbit, in a scene where Radagast the wizard rides on a sleigh that is pulled by a team of fucking rabbits.

Lastly, I was pissed that Elessar wasn’t in Elrond’s raiding party.

Okay. Enough bitching. Let’s talk about some of the good stuff!:

• Martin Freeman was fantastic
• I thought all of the Dwarves were good. A few were very underdeveloped – I don’t recall Oin and Gloin doing anything, for example, but that’s prone to happening. James Nesbitt was excellent as Bofur.
• Despite really only having an extended cameo appearance, Gollum was superb. His scenes are probably my favorites of the film, and show how with a little creativity and clever writing you can create a solid, serious scene with humorous moments that keep it light, but don’t ruin the mood of the scene.
• Much like Galadriel, Cate Blanchett is a good actress and relatively ageless.
• Hey look it’s Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords!

So: decent movie, could have easily been a lot better, worth watching. And at the very least, if nothing else, you get to see Thranduil riding an elk.