Bored of the Rings

The Hobbit:
An Unexpected Journey
DIRECTED BY: Peter
Jackson
STARRING: Martin
Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Andy Serkis
CERT: 12A

JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit is less than a quarter the length of The Lord of the Rings, so you’d imagine one movie would cover the territory handily enough. But hey, why make only one film when you can make three, each around three hours long, stretching and padding the story for every penny it’s worth? Why indeed, I asked myself, right before drifting off for one of several naps I enjoyed while watching this first instalment.
It kicks off with a bit of history, the elderly Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) recounting the rise and fall of the dwarf kingdom of Erebor for his young pup Frodo (Elijah Wood). Then the boy skips off on a fateful errand, while Bilbo lights up a strong smoke and has a very vivid flashback.
It’s 60 years earlier and a much younger Bilbo (Freeman) gets a visit from the wizard Gandalf (Mckellen). Gandalf wants to sign him up for an adventure but Bilbo is having none of it, happy enough to be living the quiet life in the Shire, where there’s no danger he’ll get incinerated for any reason anytime soon.
But it looks like his peaceful little existence is over, especially when his home is invaded by 13 yobbish dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Armitage), the second grumpiest dwarf in all of dwarf history.
The boys need Bilbo to help them take back their home on Lonely Mountain, and after what seems like half the movie, they finally leave the house and hit the road. Along the way they encounter a trio of oafish trolls, get trapped by a bunch of goblins and do battle with a fearsome pack of orcs and their vengeful leader, a giant brute with a fondness for stating the bleeding obvious, “The Dwarf-scum are over there!”
The boys also have a habit of finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, like trekking through a perilous mountain pass at the very moment the mountains start beating the crap out of each other. Which I imagine looked great on paper but up there on the screen these rock monsters look every bit as silly as the Ents did back in Lord of the Rings.
For fear there might be too much excitement – or, God forbid, the movie might end before we lose the will to live – the lads pay a visit to Rivendell, home of the elves, where everything is sweet and perfect. The bould Saruman (Christopher Lee) pops in to say hello while they’re in town, and as we all know, no trip to elf world is ever complete without words of wisdom from Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) – who is obviously very lovely but tragically incapable of a short conversation. She’s not even supposed to be in The Hobbit and neither is Saruman but, again, this padding is crucial to box office figures.
Another transplanted character is Radagast (Sylvester McCoy), a hippy wizard who cares for the forest, and tears around in a sled pulled by rabbits. He is a man of many talents, including the ability to give CPR to a hedgehog. If you didn’t know before now that you were watching what amounts to a hideously bloated children’s movie, this will set you straight.
But all is not entirely lost. Things brighten up briefly when Bilbo happens across the path of our old friend Gollum (Serkis), the little schizoid who’s clearly been treasuring his “precious” for a very long time. In perhaps the only scene that genuinely touches the darkness in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the two engage in an excellently played riddle game, the highlight of the film by a good mile.
Gollum is a brilliant visual creation but Andy Serkis brought him to astonishing life in the LOTR trilogy and his relatively brief performance here may be the best he’s done yet. Sad to say, his character is the only truly memorable one on screen.
Certainly Bilbo isn’t established particularly well, Martin Freeman playing what should be the central role with a blandness that makes him almost invisible – except, ironically enough, in the scene where he actually gets to be invisible.
As for the dwarves, they’re barely drawn as individual characters at all, their facial hair being the only difference between them. They like to eat and sing and be rowdy and clownish, which is fine I suppose if you’re five years old and you think that’s funny. As their head honcho Thorin, who’s supposed to be really heroic but is actually a bit of a whiner, Richard Armitage merely has to look cheesed off. And Gandalf, well, Ian Mckellen just has to act like he’s indulging a bunch of boisterous children.
The film does look fantastic – at least in its standard format. I didn’t see it in 3D, or in the much-hyped 48 frames per second, so I can’t comment on what is supposed to be the groundbreaking feature.
Peter Jackson has always had an eye for a beautiful shot, a knack for the visual magic. On that score, The Hobbit is another winner. Unfortunately there’s also a story to tell, and on that count Jackson has lost the plot.
Deciding to stretch a three-hour film to a nine-hour franchise was never a good move, and this first outing does not bode well for the series. It’s overlong, undercooked, disappointingly shallow, and often just plain boring.
He may redeem himself yet but in the meantime I’d recommend The Hobbit only if you’re looking for something to help you sleep.