Movie review of Hobbit: Unexpected Journey- by What the Flick

Full text transcript of the movie review of Hobbit Unexpected Journey

What the flick, everybody, welcome to the show, everyone’s here. Matt Atchity, Alonzo Airoldi, Crystal Christmas bonus here.

A lot of movies that we’re going to cover in the next two weeks leading up to the end of the year, three weeks, none of them bigger than The Hobbit.

Yes. Well, physically, how much are little guys? That’s right. Stumpy feet. Yes. All right. So The Hobbit is a story about a hobbit, and it’s actually the prequel to Lord of the Rings.

Oh, that’s why they look alike based on Tolkien’s first book, inexplicably dragged out to three movies. And you definitely feel it in this first one.

But let’s watch the trailer, dear.

You asked me once if I had told you everything there was to know about my adventures. Well, I can honestly say I have told you the truth. I may not have told you it wasn’t the book itself.

Pretty short time. Yes, the book was three hundred pages.

The book is much shorter than any of the individual parts of Lord of the Lord of the Rings. But what what Peter Jackson and his writing partners have done has gone in and pulled stuff out of Tolkien’s many, many, many books of appendices and other stories and kind of done some of the back story filling. So it is all Tolkien’s work.

Or so there’s like stuff that’s relevant to The Hobbit era in Lord of the Rings.

Like in footnotes. Yes, essentially. And they made basically Lord of the Rings. I mean, I’m sorry. Basically you wrote The Hobbit, then went on and wrote Lord of the Rings.

And after he wrote Lord of the Rings, like he couldn’t leave that world alone and kept going back in and writing stuff and saying, well, you know, while Bilbo was finding the ring, then all this other stuff happened at the same time. And like all this other. Yeah.

And you see every second of it in this movie now with more Elvish and yes, we’re getting it.

And so this is three hours just on two hours and 40 to 50, something like that. And and the others that are coming are going to probably change.

And I think one of the main things about this movie is that it really it doesn’t it really doesn’t end.

I mean, there are many there.

There feels like I mean, it’s two hours and 50 minutes and you get no resolution deliberately so. But I get that these movies are set up to tell that this is a trilogy. We’re going to get the arc in this. But usually, you know, when you even when you’re set up for a sequel, you get you finish some part of the story here. I mean, this is a journey and this movie ends and, you know, a lot more of the journey.

And I got to tell you, like, there’s a lot of reviews that that on our site, you know, the scores only at about seventy two percent right now. Seventy four. It’s not quite cross. Seventy five. A lot of people a lot of critics are saying that it does feel long, it does feel meandering. It feels like it’s incomplete because it’s part of this whole trilogy. And so there’s been a lot of users, a lot of fans that are complete, like, well, you can’t just judge it on its own. Yeah, you fucking can. Yes, you can. Otherwise make it part of a TV show. Like, really maybe this story would have been better served as to do it. It’s like a TV show for a couple of seasons and drag it out that way if you’re going to pad all of this extra stuff in the Jackson and stuff. I mean, I’m a little cynical.

I think that they should have cut this down to two Mutis going into three movies is why for one more than one, it’s like somebody that they go into will go back and see it.

I’ll buy that they are that they turn it into a couple of movies. I mean, in the book, Bilbo is gone for most of a year. You know, Bilbo goes on this journey reluctantly. He doesn’t really want to go. He kind of gets dragged into it, kind of gets, you know, guilt it into it almost by Gandalf and the Dwarves. And it’s this quest to go and defeat this dragon and get the doors of their homeland back. And along the way, Bilbo finds this little ring that becomes very important in later movies. But you get so much extra stuff that never was in the book. And I guess from a fan perspective, it’s OK. But as far as a narrative story, as far as, you know, a tight movie like it doesn’t work.

I don’t give a shit what’s in the book or not because I don’t I think I read it.

I don’t I don’t think I know it has no impact on me, but like and I get that that’s the kind of thing that I mean, that’s a healthy argument that fans are supposed to have. How much of the book do you put into the movie? And is it you know, when you do an adaptation, how truly I have to stay. And that’s all interesting in various ways. But but here, like you said, it’s it’s all there. But as a movie, it just doesn’t end. But I knew I didn’t like it because, well, when we got to get it outlooked, but because when it ended and it ends really well, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to end except for the fact even sitting in that same seat for three hours and 15 minutes. But I said when it ended.

Oh, fantastic. Like, it was just this oh, this wonderful weight had been lifted and I got to go home.

The part of why I feel so long, because we are not immersed. We we should be because of the fucking forty eight percent.

Well, I think that before we talk about the problem with the story is in my mind is that you go on these tangents that are really not related to the quest at all. Right. I mean, it’s the quest of these guys going across the country to, you know, across this world to defeat this dragon. And as they’re going like you stop and you blow ten minutes with this other wizard character because some shit’s happening in this for some reason, right, Radagast?

The Brown and like, who fucking cares? Right. Like and then you get this whole chasing and none of that serves the story. Right. And then they end up in Rivendell, they end up back seeing the elves, which happens in the book. But they spend so much extra time there that doesn’t drive the story of the quest at all.

It was really it was to get those guys to Cate Blanchett and the Hugo Weaving and the and the I that a cameo to give them substance.

And I understand clearly what Peter Jackson and the rest of the crew is doing is setting up that by the end of the third film, you’ve got as much at stake as you do in Lord of the Rings. Or something approaching that, and I get that they have to set it up, but it really makes this movie suffer narratively. I feel like and I’m a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings movies, I’m a huge Tolkien fan. And on a certain level, I’d love to see extra stuff in there, but it just takes away from the movie.

It just it really brings it to a grinding halt. I felt like my mother. I felt like it was like I was just one thing after another.

Like it’s a video game structure, like dot com, the war now and then and now come. It works in the goblin’s and now come the works again in the same way. And now I will say there are some good things that they do.

I think they hit some good marks. I think by the end, you know, that showdown that they have, you know, I don’t want to ruin anything, but there’s kind of a showdown between orcs and dwarves that happens at the end, that you see Bilbo as a character kind of step up to the plate. And I like that. I thought that that really worked. I thought that that was good.

But there’s so many just tangents that the movie goes on throughout the book, their eighth meeting, it’s just it was, you know, enough with the orcs.

Let’s do numbers for it looks like shit. And it was too long. What did I give it? Six. Six. I was disappointed. I really wanted to like this film. I gave it a four and a half, but I was thinking that’s like a three and a half with the forty eight and maybe a five and a half if you didn’t see it in forty eight.

If you can avoid doing that, it’s not every theater. So you might be able to avoid.

I would strongly recommend seeing this in twenty four frames. Don’t see it in three days. You know a lot of people are, we’re seeing a lot of feedback that people are complaining about, critics complaining about the frame rate and whether or not that makes for a valid review. Absolutely it does, because we’re forcing it all, forcing us all to see it that way. You’re going to hate it. Yeah. Yeah. You’re more likely to hate it. So it’s the most useful way you see it. The other way you’ll enjoy your movie, your money will be better spent. That pulls it up to a five, but it’s not worth it.

We’re like no on this. Well, yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s a there’s kind of a grudging acceptance. I think if you read the reviews, you know, it’s like seventy four percent.

Real quick last, the Martin Freeman who plays Bilbo, I think those a really good casting choices. I think the casting, I think the acting, the performances, I think are all great. He’s good. Everybody else we know is already good like this, you know, and then I think they do a decent job.

You know, you don’t get personal, you don’t get distinct personalities for every dwarf. You know, there’s 13 of them, but they do a good job of calling out at least five or six of them that you get a sense of.

And I thought that that was decently done.

Yeah, but he was good. I thought Bilbo was good. He’s a good actor. All right. So there you go. You got a lot of information on the.