Movie Review - The Hobbit

I read only one review of The Hobbit and it was terrible. I wasn't that excited about it in the first place. I'm a big fan of the "Lord of the Rings" books and movies but it'd been some 40 years since I'd read "The Hobbit" and frankly I didn't remember much about it.  But several people I know saw it and loved it so we went to see it yesterday. In 3D. And at the high frame rate.

We found it to be quite enjoyable. I'll never love it as much as LOTR but few movies will raise to that level for me.

If you liked LOTR, I think you'll like this as well. If you didn't like LOTR, then just stay away, you'll hate this.

It's got everything a good LOTR nerd wants: hobbits (of course), dwarfs (almost all of the major characters are, in fact, dwarfs), Gandalf, orcs, underground passages, Gollum, and elves.

It's also got a bunch of stuff that wasn't in the book. The book was pretty thin. Even if Peter Jackson filmed everything in the book, he couldn't stretch it into 3 long movies. If you're a great "The Hobbit" fan-boy you should stay away.

The plot, at least so far, is pretty simple. The dwarfs lost their homeland (and a great pile of gold) under the mountain to a flying, fire-breathing dragon. Now, some generations later, they want the old place back. Gandalf, the great gray wizard, agrees to help them. And he brings along a hobbit, for reasons which are never made clear. After various adventures (several running battles with orcs, dinner with the elves, and being rescued by giant birds), the party arrives within 2 movies of their goal. Oh, and a golden ring is involved.

I'm not a big fan of 3D movies. We only saw it in 3D because we had the time of the regular showing wrong and decided to stay for the 3D. It was only luck that it was also a high-frame rate showing. The 3D was pretty good. 3D is pretty good when it is not too obtrusive. I'd definitely say that the 3D enhanced the movie watching experience for me. I'm not too sure about the high-frame rate. My son has seen the movie in 3D at both the high and regular frame-rate and he thought the difference was very noticeable. He thought that the high-frame rate was much crisper. I'll admit that the movie was about as sharp and clear as any movie I've seen.

The review I read made a reference to Star Wars, liking the Hobbit Trilogy to the 3-movie prequel to Episodes 4-5-6 of Star Wars. In fact, he wrote that "The Hobbit" was 'one Jar-Jar Binks' away from being as bad as "The Phantom Menace".  This is not the movie I saw.