The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, A Triple Review

The first installment of what's going to be a Hobbit trilogy has been unleashed. I liked it, and then again I hated it. I slapped my own face more than once, both in frustration and excitement. I've seen it now three times in the first 48 hours of its release (in 24 fps, in 24 fps 3D, and 48 fps 3D--oh yes, preciouss, we doesn't mess around), so I think I've got a grasp on how I feel about it in all three dimensions.

First of all, I assumed I would feel weird about the HFR 3D, since I've been really vocal about my distaste for the 3D movement from the beginning. But, lo and behold, I had no problems with it. Yes, 3D is very distracting if you're a traditional filmgoer, and no, it's not for everyone (or for me, for that matter). In my view, the HFR is no more distracting than the 3D effects themselves, but it dramatically increases the quality of the picture from the "old-school" 24 fps 3D. So much so that I don't think I'll ever see another 3D movie that isn't 48 fps. After five minutes, I completely forgot about the "soap opera effect."

I remember the feeling of watching The Fellowship of the Ring's midnight showing. It had a slow, quiet, simple beginning. When I watch it now, I still feel that sense of beginning something wondrous that I don't yet understand. There's no self-awareness, no pre-determined admission that this is going to be a billion-dollar movie. It's a very subtle thing that many first installments have. It's humility.

Unexpected Journey isn't a kid anymore. It's out of college with a twelve-figure budget and wants to date a supermodel with a crack addiction. And yet it reminds me of some ADHD children's features produced recently (Polar Express, Yogi Bear, Cat in the Hat, and other over-the-top adaptations of simple classics), particularly during the extravagant action sequences in Goblin-town. The movie opens with a rip-roaring prologue (V.O. by Holm as Bilbo circa his Long-Expected Party) that wasn't terrible. It threw a massive amount of CGI shots in your face right away. I could sense Jackson sitting next to me like a needy friend sharing a movie: "Like it? Like it? I do. I really do." For some, it might annoy. For me it did at first, but by the third viewing my self-righteous indignation had gone away.

What twice-bakes my cram (and more so each viewing) is that the prologue fizzles out with a very contrived cameo-scene between Elijah Wood and Ian Holm that's supposed to take place minutes before the first scene in The Fellowship of the Ring. The continuity with the previous film is pretty atrocious. Both look much older and are wearing noticeably different wigs than they had in Fellowship. The dialogue seems pointless--they flirt for a few minutes with conflict over Bilbo's rising peculiarity, which goes nowhere and does nothing for the movie.

I'm sure the producers wanted to make a clear bridge into The Hobbit by giving the audience something familiar to chew on, but in a 162-minute movie, you can't afford this time. PJ is a repeat offender in breaking into act two deep in the second quarter, and this movie is no different. Maybe they just needed to give the Shire some more face time (they built it from scratch again, for real this time). Anyway, it didn't work for me. The Phantom Menace didn't begin with an older Luke and Leia discussing their father's childhood. Think how awkward that would have been. To me this is worse.

Prologues are great if there isn't a convenient story reason to do exposition in the dialogue early on. In this case, there's a perfect place for dialogue exposition: when the dwarves have to explain to the movie's protagonist why they're going east on an adventure--in one of the first scenes of the movie. All of the necessary information in the prologue could have been easily shifted to the party scene. What bothered me most was that it begins like a sequel, not a prequel, so they won't be as easy to watch in chronological order. It knows too well what it is--a blockbuster that's going to flash enough (metaphorical) 48 fps skin to get the (less metaphorical) gold.

But things look up from there. Martin Freeman explodes onto the screen with real heart. He's quirky and fun, upstaging even the celebrated wizard. The entrance of the dwarves is hilarious and charming, and it's immediately clear that Jackson has succeeded in differentiating all 13 of them. Here we see Bilbo as a strong protagonist who actually has a personality. The movie's already got a head start on the Rings trilogy, where Frodo really never became a person, just the personification of an emotional objective.

The movie also stays more true to its source material than many reviews are saying (and certainly more faithful than The Two Towers was). What reviewers don't always say is that the source material includes plot points from the Appendices of the The Lord of the Rings, where additional information is given on Gandalf's actions during the events of The Hobbit, and a good deal of background plot concerning Thorin and his family. This is where most of the material that appears in the movies comes from. Some of it, like Azog and his band of wolf-riding orcs, and our meeting the simpleton wizard Radagast (who has a lovely stream of dried bird crap down one side of his hair), works very well into the story. Other bits are more clumsy in their realization, like the impromptu meeting of the White Council. The scheming and intrigue of Middle-earth's most powerful minds could have been a lot more compelling.

Other highlights: the riddle game with Gollum (with whom I still have interpretation issues, but that's too much to address here, and doesn't really affect the quality of the performance), and a great ending sequence (if a little too long). Other things I hated: the dwarves doing dish-acrobatics, the cartoony ringwraith who for some reason is white (racists!), the dwarves being chased by wargs across seemingly identical plots of land for ten minutes, the stone giants, and the length of what should have been a relatively quick escape from Goblin-town.

The common denominator of most of my complaints is Jackson's CGI trigger finger. It must have been sore, as you can tell just by this video blog entry on his facebook page. Goblins, orcs, and even the villain Azog are--like Gollum--completely digital, whereas in the Rings trilogy such characters were done with physical makeup and costuming. Throw on top of that some laboriously long action sequences and overly-mobile camerawork and you've got an IMAX rollercoaster, where the set pieces do that thing where they almost hit you, over and over. In Unexpected Journey, the camera is forever spinning and jumping around. Compare it to The Fellowship of the Ring and you'll want to prescribe PJ some Ritalin. You also might realize how much Peter Jackson has come to ever-so-slightly resemble a kiwi George Lucas.

Bottom line: like the Rings trilogy (notably The Return of the King), Unexpected Journey is just too long. The amount of plot that occurs could have easily taken place in 130 minutes, but I make this point more on principle than on effect. It doesn't feel as long as, say, King Kong, during which I was wishing I could take a hacksaw to every action sequence and halve it. If you did so with this movie, you might miss some interesting visuals, but ones that in the end do little to improve the quality of the experience. Maybe Jackson will release an unextended edition that's better paced.

You could interpret the running time as adding insult to injury in light of how much of that time is spent on spectacle. It's easily a third of the duration, very telling as to PJ's storytelling priorities. To someone who desperately wants these movies to be good, that's concerning. But it entertains, and if that's what you've asked for, Jackson delivers. The fact is that I liked it more each time I saw it, because I knew what I was getting myself into. It probably won't change your life, which is something I couldn't honestly say about the book.