The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) rating: 6/10

Not as good as any of the LOTR trilogy, this movie was rightly panned as a disappointment.

Note: some minor spoilers ahead...

I noticed a lot of repeats of the LOTR themes and ideas in this movie which is sort of like Fellowship. Similarities: trip to Rivendale, bunch of quest characters together in a group, trip through a mountain pass with rocks falling down, Gandolf stays with the group most of the way, but disappears for some of the time.

One anachronism bugged me. The dwarfs are offered a meal at Rivendale and distrust the elvish salad. One says he never eats greens and asks for 'chips'. I just couldn't imagine chips could mean anything other than modern potato chips in a shiny plastic bag. That comment took me out of the movie entirely.

Aside from this, it is also entirely too long. Since I was viewing it on dvd, I did have the great benefit of being able to Ffwd through boring parts, which I gleefully did, including a good bit of the Radagast dialog and action.

A few things I did like in this film: the telepathic conversation between Gandolf and Galadriel, the Bilbo v Gollum scene, and moon writing.

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I liked the review of 'The Hobbit' in the New Yorker by Anthony Lane who comments about the 48fps experience of the movie:

"The rest of us will be reminded of high-definition television—better known, in my household, as a reason to avoid viewing films on TV, unless they contain characters named Woody and Buzz. HD has the unfortunate effect of turning every film into what appears to be a documentary about a film set, not just warts-and-all but carefully supplying extra warts where a wart has no right to be. There is something awry in the idea that Tolkien’s wondrous inventions—an entire history and landscape, plus trees of unknown languages, grown from one man’s fancy—should be transmitted through a medium newly and utterly bent on realism. When the imaginary is presented as fact, hard and hypervisible, right down to the popping buttons of a waistcoat, does the magic not drop off?"

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2012/12/17/121217crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=all