The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey movie review

Okay, so at one point last year I read that David Tennant was almost cast as Bilbo Baggins. My response to this was "hell yeah, forget Freeman. Let's get Tennant." Now that I've seen the movie, Tennant can wait to play Gandalf when they reboot the franchise in 25 years.

No spoilers.

Okay, sorry I'm late with this review, but its here. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey starts Martin Freeman from Sherlock as Bilbo, which, if you didn't surmise from my opening joke, is probably one of the best casting choices ever made. He is perfect as Bilbo. He nails everything: the lines, the mannerism, the whole sense of anxiety, its perfect. That being said, one of my biggest problems with the movie was Bilbo didn't really feel like the main character. I mean I know he is, given the eponymous Hobbit thing, and he does get some great lines and character development, but he really felt more like Han Solo in a New Hope: an important afterthought, but still an afterthought.

Anyway, like I said, Martin Freeman's a great Bilbo, and everyone else is great too; Ian McKellan nails it as Gandalf (still only the Grey at this point) again, this time arguably even more badass then in Lord of the Rings. Granted, he doesn't take on another Balrog, but he's still kicking some major tail. The guy who plays Thorrin who's escapes me is also awesome; Thorrin is basically the Aragorn of this movie, and of all the dwarves, he's the most developed and has the most fleshed out back story.

Let me touch on that: I like all the dwarves so far (their singing is so awesome), but not all of them feel like actual characters cannon fodder. Sylvester McCoy's dwarf is done nicely, as are the two brothers(?) with rhyming names that I can't spell. Beyond that though... Odds are we're gonna start to care about them in the next two... which is when they'll start to die.

And now for the pacing; I'm gonna say the same thing about the pacing that everyone will: it had some issues. There were a lot of scenes that I thought were kind of unnecessary, especially this one part that I won't spoil, but I will say that while it was really cool, after I thought about, I realized it probably should've been left for the director's cut. Don't get me wrong, it was a really freaking cool scene, but still. Same goes for a couple of  other sequences that I just thought could've been either cut down by a few minutes and removed all together. It goes like this: first twenty mintutes: awesome. Next thirty minutes I looked at the clock on my phone a few times. Then after that it really picks up and its absolutely fantastic with awesome fighting and battle scenes and just epic moments in general with great music (as in I'm probably going to buy these songs on my iPod great) and good special effects (I know some people are gonna say it was a CGI crapfest, but wasn't. There is a lot of CGI, but its not horrendously overused), and a lot of great humor too. I actually laughed a lot more then I expected to. Granted, I know that the book the Hobbit is more whimsical then the books the Lord of the Rings, but I was still surprised by the amount of times I laughed.

There are two characters in the movie I think I need to address now, and the first is Radagast the Brown. A lot of people are gonna hate this guy. I personally didn't, heck I even laughed at one or two things he did while he was trying to cure his little CGI porcupine (named Sebastian), but there will be some people who call him the Jar Jar Binks of Middle Earth. Again, I don't think he is, and neither did my friends that I saw it with. But if you do feel that way, he's only like ten minutes of the movie, so don't worry.

The next character is Gollum. Bilbo and Gollum in the cave together was the best part of the entire movie. I could've watched that for two hours. Gollum looks great too; the effects have made it so he really looks like he's there now, and Andy Serkis, as usual, deserves the Oscar that he won't get. But that sequence was just so entertaining. I actually can't even really tell why it's so great without spoiling it, so that's a bit of a bummer.

The last thing I'm going to address is the 48 frames per second speed. I have no idea what I saw this movie in, I really don't. When I was looking at times for showings on my theater's website, all it said was "showing is in 2D". I'm going to assume that I saw it in 24 frames per second because of that fact that at no point did I think it was on fast forward, so yeah.

Also, just as a side note, without spoiling anything, there was a cameo in this movie that people are gonna find polarizing. I personally really liked it; I got a great kick out of it, and really appreciated the way that they did it. That being said, the guy next to me hated it and thought it was totally unnecessary and indulgent. So be warned, you will be polarized.

In the end, I will say that the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a movie night classic.

Alright, so what's your favorite Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth movie, which can include the Hobbit? Comment below, let me know!