Monday, April 22, 2013

Finally broke down - and watched The Hobbit

I procrastinated, I put if off, I told myself I'd wait until the DVD was out. And then I put it off a little longer.

Why? Because I'd heard not-so-positive reviews. And while I take such things with a grain of salt--I want to form my own opinions--it wasn't encouraging news.

The remember the first time I read The Hobbit. I was a child, maybe eight or nine. I'm not sure of my exact age. But I do remember that I loved it. It quickly became one of my favorite books. In fact, it took me about a year before I could get into Lord of the Rings. Initially, I was disappointed, because it wasn't about Bilbo.

When I heard that they'd turned the Hobbit into three movies, I hoped they'd done similar things as they had with the extended versions of LOTR, which I find less choppier than the shorter versions.

My daughter suggested there would be a lot of epic walking.

Well, I guess someone else was concerned about that. It looked to me like they tried to address the problem, but didn't really understand their audience.

They did some things really well. Where they expanded on existing back story, it worked.

And for the most part, they handled the dwarfs with taste and dignity, making them characters, not caricatures. But then they failed to capitalize on what they'd built.

They had a great opportunity to explore these characters, to make us really care about Bilbo and his new friends. Instead, we got too much unsupported action, with an unnecessary villain, a fight between mountains inserted where it really didn't make sense, and endless scenes of CGI-fueled conflict.

It was as if someone had taken one of those dreadful, car-chase-and-blow-everything-up movies, and transported it to a fantasy setting.

I was disappointed, enough that I don't know if I'll even bother with the next installment.