The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Reviews
Top CriticIt frequently seems as though Jackson was less interested in making The Hobbit than in remaking his own fabulously successful Lord of the Rings series.
My first thought in watching The Hobbit was: Do we really need this movie? It was my last thought, too.
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| Original Score: C+
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
There's no denying the majesty in Peter Jackson's visuals but he's taken a relatively slim children's book and stretched it beyond the limits.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
The repeated iterations of fight, flight and respite here get wearing. Especially perhaps because, with Jackson's fetish for detail, they take more time to watch on screen than to read about.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" has finally arrived, not on wings of gossamer fancy but with a hairy-footed thud.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
An overlong adventure enlivened by wonders.
An Unexpected Journey is a major comedown, a muddle-headed and cumbersome piece of filmmaking that betrays Jackson's mercenary motives -- Tolkien's book, too.
If you loved the earlier films, these are moments you will hold on to, but they're very few, and they're not enough.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Part One of director Peter Jackson's planned film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit forces audiences to run an obstacle course before the fun kicks in.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Between its lighter tone and a decade's worth of improvements in digital film techniques, there should be enough of a novelty factor to delight most fans.
I was impressed with how much of the story's good humor Jackson and Co. manage to weave into the spectacle. It's there in the close shave with a gang of hungry trolls, and it really lifts off once Andy Serkis' uncanny Gollum enters the picture.
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| Original Score: B
Tolkien's inventive, episodic tale of a modest homebody on a dangerous journey has been turned into an overscale and plodding spectacle.
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| Original Score: 2/5
The last hour of this movie is pretty much nonstop, and it's a gas.
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| Original Score: B-
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.
This is not about a reluctant hero drawing courage from some deep personal well. It's not about dread and danger. It's about visual effects.
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| Original Score: 2/4
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is not the worst film of the year, but it may be the most disappointing.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
I'm afraid that whoever it was in the New York Film Critics Circle who voted for "The Hobbit" as best animated film had a point. And so did the people who suspected that this whole thing was a bad idea.
The film is worthy of both your attention and of the Tolkien legendarium in which Jackson, his actors and his Weta Workshop technical crew are so firmly situated.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Though at two hours, 50 minutes it feels overstuffed, the first "Hobbit" film holds its own thanks to inspired acting and some jaw-dropping technical innovations.
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| Original Score: 3/4
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
[The] elements are in place again, but the story feels less substantial than the Lord of the Rings tales.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Solid and acceptable instead of soaring and exceptional, [and] unnecessarily hampered in its quest to reach the magical heights of the trilogy.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
There are people who claim to see no difference between 24 and 48 frame rates, and to them, I'd recommend an unexpected journey to the eye doctor.
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| Original Score: 3/4
"The Hobbit" becomes what it was originally meant to be - not a cut-from-the-same-cloth prequel, but its own, individual thing.
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| Original Score: 3/4
[A] dazzling, busy, fundamentally tedious movie ...
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
I found that it provided a pretty convincingly immersive experience, and I look forward to the technology's evolution/refinement. Which I guess also means I look forward to the next two installments of the trilogy.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
In a bit of irony, Bilbo Baggins says at the end of the movie: "I do believe the worst is behind us." We can only hope so.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The more dark it becomes, the more 'The Hobbit' becomes compelling as a story, and finds a fitting tone.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Even though this installment is mostly a prelude, Jackson's eccentric mixture of low humor, earnest foreboding and digitally processed pageantry is consistently engaging and immersive.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Piles on enough eye candy and action sequences to please fans, plus more humor than the three "Rings" films - even if it only occasionally achieves the trio's grandeur.
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| Original Score: 3/4
On balance, honor has been done to Tolkien, not least in the famous riddle game between Bilbo and Gollum, and some of the exploits to come will surely lighten the load.
An Unexpected Journey is a competent, entertaining effort but it neither enthralls nor amazes in the way its predecessors did.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's hard to overstate the degree to which the 48fps format interfered with my ability to get lost in this movie's story.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy [has] been replaced by something that resembles tatty summer-stock theater.
Even once Bilbo and company take to the hobbit highway, the pacing is leisurely verging on lethargic ...
The movie lacks majesty. Grand in parts, the movie is too often grandiose or grandiloquent; and the running time is indefensible.
Tolkien's brisk story of intrepid little hobbit Bilbo Baggins is drawn out and diluted by dispensable trimmings better left for DVD extras.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Fulfilling just a fraction of J.R.R. Tolkien's "There and Back Again" subtitle, The Hobbit alternately rewards and abuses auds' appetite for all things Middle-earth.
There are elements in this new film that are as spectacular as much of the Rings trilogy was, but there is much that is flat-footed and tedious as well, especially in the early going.
The movie itself is a lot of fun. And if you can separate yourself from the visual distraction, you'll find plenty to enjoy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Vital as they are, Gollum and Bilbo can only do so much to keep us enchanted. Is Jackson able to sustain the magic in two more installments? I peer into Tolkien's Misty Mountains and embrace the journey.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
