My Rating: It was okay. Not good, not bad. The High Frame Rate killed the experience for me. If you are a Middle Earth fan then see it as a matinee. If not, wait for DVD.
Initial thoughts: I was excited for the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but that excitement was a cooled off by the thought that I'd be seeing it in HFR (high frame rate at 48 frames per second), which I was skeptical about. I wanted to see Middle Earth again after so many years, so I opted for the midnight show on Thursday and rolled the dice on HFR and 3D. I should have gone to see it in normal movie 24fps.
Nutshell: C'mon, it is the Hobbit. If you don't know what it is about, then you've either never read the book or seen the LOTR movies, which means you just arrived from outside Earth or from a vagina. I feel there is no need for me to sum it up.
What I dig: It is a solid return to Middle Earth from Peter Jackson, which is to be expected. You've got the old characters in there and the addition of the dwarves fit in great. The 3D wasn't bad and wasn't distracting, but it also didn't amaze my eyeballs. The fight scenes were okay, but I feel like Aragorn and his crew would have fucked these dwarves up in a matchup, despite the superior dwarven number. I think that statement there sums up overall how I feel about this movie versus any of the LOTR movies.
What I don't dig: This is gonna be a long one. The HFR (high frame rate) was visually atrocious to me. It bothered the shit out of me from the very beginning all the way to the end. It was like I was watching an afterschool special with an amazing wardrobe budget. Also, a lot of the effects looked fucking terrible in HFR.
The dialogue was just not that good. The few jokes there were I saw in the trailer, which was disappointing. Beyond that, the quality and emotional resonance feels like it was watered down from the LOTR movies. Could it be the creative team just wasn't that into this?
Honestly, I got bored in parts, which never happened in the LOTR movies. Is it fair that I keep referring to them in this review? I feel it is, since they are all part of the same overall world. Getting back to being bored, Peter Jackson and crew definitely padded this movie way out. There were some unnecessary scenes and characters, like, for instance, scenes with the guy who had bird shit running down his face didn't need to be in the film. Yeah, that's right, I said there is a guy with bird shit on his face in here.
The film needed an editor and the script needed a more solid climax. The ending fight just didn't hit for me, and since they went into this knowing it would be multiple films, why not edit this down and end it somewhere more exciting, or with higher stakes? I find it easy to suspend disbelief most times, but my boredom with the story let my disbelief run. Also, I was just damn tired of seeing so many goblins in this, and I'm sure we'll see more later. I am not terribly excited for the films to come.
Final thoughts: Unless you like the look of telenovelas or tv soap operas, DO NOT SEE THIS IN HIGH FRAME RATE. I'm curious to see if it will look better with a normal theater frame rate, but I really am not willing to shell out another 10+ bucks to find out. Overall, it felt like a diluted LOTR movie and wasn't nearly as exciting any of the previous ones to me. Given what we've seen before, this should have been better, plain and simple. And no HFR, for reals.
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