The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

Is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey worth watching?

Yes if you want the door into Erebor — 66% Celluloid Score. Peter Jackson’s 169-minute opener is lighter and baggier than Fellowship: dinner songs, three trolls, and a Rivendell layover before the story remembers it has a dragon.

It is the first Hobbit film in the Middle-earth watch order. Start here, not with Smaug. The 48 fps theatrical experiment is not required; the story is.

Why does it feel soft next to Fellowship?

Because The Hobbit is a children’s quest that Jackson is staging as a trilogy prequel to a war epic. Martin Freeman’s Bilbo is the correct note — reluctant, funny, already a little ruined by the Ring. The dwarves are a crowd, not a fellowship, and the film spends too long introducing them as a musical number.

What still works: the prologue’s Erebor fall, the Riddles in the Dark (Andy Serkis earning the return), and the sense that the Shire is a place you might actually want to stay. The runtime is the objection. 169 minutes of “unexpected” is a joke the edit did not get.

Who should skip An Unexpected Journey?

Skip it if you only wanted the Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy — that trilogy does not need this. Skip it if high-frame-rate smoothness made you nauseous in 2012; watch a 24 fps version. Skip waiting for Desolation of Smaug to “get good” before you start; this is the table-setting, for better and worse.

Title page: movie page. Rings of Power is a separate TV tree: The Rings of Power.

Verdict

Jackson’s return to Middle-earth opens soft — longer and lighter than Fellowship, but still the gateway into Bilbo’s road. Budget your evening; the mountain is later.