This is my review of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit.
The Hobbit was a big, steaming pile of disappointment.
It didn't live up to LotR. It didn't even live up to the Narnia films. It managed to be neither a kid's movie nor a film for LotR fans. It's an unholy nightmatish mishmash where you get troll snot or a cartoonish Gungan Goblin King on a giant toilet for a throne (I wish I was making that up) one second, and then, a long drawn out (and completely unnecesary) roundtable scene about The Necromancer or images of horrific violent the next.
There was absolutely no consistency in tone. NONE. The filmmaking was so incompetent that the mood whiplashed back and forth at breakneck speeds.
God help me if I have to sit through another scene of the film's Jar Jar Binks, Radagast. Oh, Sylvester McCoy. You're a delightful actor. The performance they had him give was just insulting. He's a character more suitable in the Oogieloves PSA show than a Tolkien adaptation.
The childish humor was wasted on me and the long family histories were boring for the kids. The film managed to just completely miss the mark in terms of capturing Tolkien. The Appendices based were all unneeded, and the film managed to be LONGER than the book for certain sections. HOW DO YOU DO THAT IN A TOLKIEN-BASED MOVIE?!
Tolkien wrote this as a children's book. They should have treated the material like the author did and just made one movie. It's pacing was sluggish and agonizing. The additional material added NOTHING, other than padding.
Also, the cameos from the previous films were utterly worthless. It was basically Elrond, Galadriel, and more all standing around telling the audience that what happened in LotR was going to happen. ...Thanks, the previous films only grossed about $3 billion, total, so I think we all got that memo, Elrond.
In all, it wasn't an atrocious film, but by damn if Peter Jackson and co weren't trying their best to make it so.