[6]

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films are among my very favorites of all time, so The Hobbit is doomed to suffer in comparison. If you're not a devoted fan of Middle Earth, the first half of An Unexpected Journey will probably feel a bit cumbersome. Jackson should have trimmed 20 or 30 minutes (starting with the oddly wooden cameo performances from Ian Holm and Elijah Wood). But rest assured the pace does pick up and the film does find its action/adventure groove by the end.

My main complaint is the film’s lack of emotional engagement. I felt like I should have cared more about Bilbo and his dwarf companions — maybe it’s the actors, maybe it’s the source material, maybe both? At least Ian McKellen’s Gandalf and Sylvester McCoy’s Radagast are warm and endearing. The emotional heft finally comes in the last twenty minutes (better late than never!), damn near redeeming the preceding hours.

Peter Jackson’s decision to spread the tale over three lengthy films remains a dubious one. And not to harp on the movie too much, because it really does work overall, but… Peter Jackson, please sir, cut back on all the whiz-bang zooming camera shit and majestic aerial sweeps. A little goes a long way, and you’re not Michael Bay (why would you want to be?) As a matter of necessity, these films already contain so much computer-generated imagery and tortuously calculated visual effects, we don’t need anything else unnatural taking us out of the moment.