Warner Bros.
174 min., dir. by Peter Jackson, with Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, and Ian McKellen

Peter Jackson and company brought a series of books to the big screen that many thought to be unfilmable when they struck gold with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Returning to the world of JRR Tolkien by tackling the precursor novel to The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, Jackson brings back all the charm and wonderment of Tolkien’s mystical world, and then crushes it under the obtrusive fist of the film’s HFR (high frame resolution) 48 FPS presentation.

Bilbo Baggins (played by the always wonderful Martin Freeman) leads a simple life that he doesn’t care to see changed. Unbeknownst to Bilbo, the great wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellan) has enlisted Bilbo to take part in a perilous journey for which he’s ill-equipped to partake in. Gandalf has agreed to help a group of 13 dwarves reclaim their home from the great dragon Smaug. To complete their plans of recapturing their home, Gandalf has convinced the dwarves they need a hobbit to fulfill the role of, burglar — someone who can sneak in and out of the dragon’s lair without being detected. Reluctant to join up at first, Bilbo has a change of heart and heads off on the adventure of a lifetime.

Much like a docudrama, The Hobbit loses heaps of dramatic tension as we all know certain characters won’t meet their untimely doom when caught in a sticky situation. That dumbfounded awe and power of discovering the nooks and crannies of Middle Earth and its colorful array of inhabitants has faded. The story has changed, and the goal is different in specifics alone. Little people doing big things, the naive hero learning the world expands past his fence, the wise guide who doesn’t disclose what he really knows — all of this still holds a modicum of entertainment, but holds no surprises. A movie doesn’t need nail-biting tension to make it a success, but The Hobbit certainly tries to sell the angle too many times to ignore.

Story is everything when it comes to a great film. I’ll never stop saying it — a film can have a great story and succeed through spotty cinematography or poor sound, yet the newfangled 48FPS style of The Hobbit is the exception to the rule. The Lord of the Rings trilogy took digital effects to new heights, making creatures we all know don’t exist look real. The Hobbit, on the other hand, takes real people and makes them appear to be fake. The sharp detail and fluid 3D aspects work well, but the entire film looks like a made-for-TV movie rendered into a video game cinematic instead of a stunning display of glorious eye candy. Characters often move at odd speeds, as if someone sat on a remote’s fast-forward button, or like a buffering video catching up after it stalls. The visual disruption of The Hobbit is so distracting it was hard to focus on the dialogue of the film’s two openings.

As the film pressed along and my eyes adjusted, things did progress a little. The entire second half of the film has some great little vignettes, as the team of small warriors fall into the hands of the Goblin King and Bilbo runs into our old friend Gollum, which leads to him obtaining a certain ring. Even through the unnatural character movements of the HFR process, Gollum is more impressive than ever. With even more of actor Andy Serkis’s real face bleeding through the twisted creature’s digital features, the battle of wits between Bilbo and Gollum is playfully silly, while resting on a layer of terrifying uneasiness.

It’s hard to tell if The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey would be a different movie if it were presented in a format that simply looks better than this HFR garbage. A film’s presentation shouldn’t play such a contributing factor in its ability to satisfy an audience, but there’s just no escaping the misfire it causes to a film series that became an instant classic. Put The Hobbit next to any of the original three films and it looks like the direct-to-DVD knockoff with a slightly different name meant to trick you into a purchase. The Hobbit will still entertain its audience, but will never live down the stigma of its technological failure.

—

Matthew Schuchman is the founder and film critic of Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache and the contributing film writer for IPaintMyMind.