Not Normal - Who's who again? (Hobbit movie review)

I love the Lord of The Rings films (having read the books many moons ago) so was very excited to go see The Hobbit over the holidays.

In this 1st installment of the trilogy Bilbo the hobbit is living a comfortable life until one day when Gandalf the Grey shows up at his door and invites him on a quest. The quest, if he chooses to accept, is helping dwarves retake their homeland, The Lonely Mountain, from a dangerous dragon named Smaug.

Along the way they face challenge after challenge that even Gandalf was not expecting, including a certain ring that well… wants to rule them all.

What I liked:

- The nerd happiness I felt seeing familiar characters and being back at The Shire or Rivendell.

- Pure eye candy, looks amazing (I did not see it in 3D and it still looked great)

- The back story about Smaug taking over the mountain and it’s treasures.

- Martin Freeman as Bilbo. With all those dwarfs and wizards running around he made a memorable character without being cheesy or over the top.

- That Peter Jackson achieved the lighter tone of this story. (where as LOTR is darker)

- The Gollum and Bilbo riddles in the dark scene was amazing start to finish, loved it!

- The kids reaction down the row from me at the end when Smaug opened his eye

Where You Lost Me:

- Although I didn’t find the drawn out story too bad, I’m a little worried about the next 2 parts and how much filler will be added. Should have stuck with 2 movies as opposed to 3.

- The Brown wizard, just wasn’t my cup of tea.

- Yes it looked nice but there was a little too much computer involvement for me. I would have loved for the white orc, Azog, to be more of the actor and less of a computer generated face same with the goblins and goblin king. It made them scarier in LOTR, for me anyway.

- Saruman not looking at anyone at the table scene in Rivendell. I know Christopher Lee was ill and could not travel to shoot so he was added in, but it drove me nuts.

- Which dwarf is which again? I tried to pay attention to the differences in them to keep track of who was who but it can get a little crazy.

- The escape from the Goblin king… now where have we already seen this before…

It Needed More:

- In this case it needed less, as mentioned above, computer enhancing on some of the characters.

- More of that riddle scene, I think a few were missed…

- Of the brown wizard guy and his bird poop face. Ew.

4 sandwiches out of 5. Enjoyed being back on an adventure in a place I love to visit.

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.