The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Reviews

Peter Jackson's return to Middle Earth feels familiar and unfulfilling.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

It would be wrong to ignore the technical achievement that Jackson has pulled off yet again. But when said and done, "The Hobbit" feels more like a cinematic encyclopedia of Tolkein's mythical world rather than a trip to the movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10

Jackson's biggest failing with the first installment of The Hobbit is that he crowds out a great story with such minor plot developments that carry no immediate importance to the movie or characters.

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Peter Jackson definitely knows what he's doing. He just didn't do it this time.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10

It's all fight scenes, and the fight scenes have no arc. You just sit there waiting for some inevitable deus ex machina to save the day whenever Peter Jackson feels like it. The characters have no agency. It's like watching a kid play with his GI Joes.

Full Review | Original Score: C-

In his attempt to produce a definitive, enhanced-strength version of the text, Jackson has stripped away much of the fun, a great deal of the energy and most of the humour.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

This is hobbit cordial, one part juice to nine parts water.

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To gaze upon the film, like Frodo staring into that prophetic magic orb, is to be shaken by a dark vision of cinema's future.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Peter Jackson didn't particularly want to direct The Hobbit, and I didn't particularly want to be bored to tears, but there we both were, fulfilling what could only be described as some sort of cinematic murder-suicide pact.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Little about the storytelling suggests a beating heart beneath the visuals; once the journey has begun, the characters find themselves in life-threatening danger with stupefying regularity.

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Lacking the interesting characters and intriguing subplots that made the earlier trilogy so engaging, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is too flat, too slow.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

Jackson seems to be going through the motions of epic fantasy filmmaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.5/10

Viewers have come to expect visceral combat between characters who feel tangible in their appearance and reactions, but there's none of that here.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

Jackson's risky creative choices have drained Bilbo Baggins' adventure of its magic.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

It's the behaviour of the supposedly affable dwarves that makes this particular 'adventure' such a punishing experience.

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Jackson has come back to Middle Earth to compose his most masturbatory effort yet.

Full Review | Original Score: D

To its own narrative detriment, "The Hobbit" works hard to lay the framework for what will follow. Certainly that's one way to set out on a trilogy, but it's surely not the best.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

When, in Jackson's film, someone describes a character's "love of gold" as having become "too fierce," you wonder if the warning might apply to "The Hobbit" in other ways.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

For thousands, the Lord of The Rings trilogy was an emotion-filled spectacle; The Hobbit, by comparison, is all pixels and no pulse.

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Unless your dreams are populated by denizens of Middle Earth, endless footage of them simply talking or walking is a lot less spectacular than Peter Jackson thinks it is.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10