{4\/5} “I fear this quest has set in motion forces we do not yet understand.”<\/p>\n
Gandalf the Grey comes to the home of Bilbo Baggins to offer him an unexpected opportunity — go on an adventure. A group of dwarves has decided now is the time to reclaim their home, which has been taken over by a dragon. It will take some time to get there, and there are dangers on the way — including orcs and trolls. But they will also receive help along the way — from the elf Lord Elrond, and Radagast the Brown.<\/p>\n
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey<\/strong> was released in 2012. I’ve already reviewed it once<\/a>.<\/p>\n I watched this movie again, in preparation for seeing the sequel — I remembered the general idea, but had forgotten some of the details. Since I knew it wasn’t the greatest movie since sliced bread, I was able to appreciate it for what it was.<\/p>\n I liked it better this time. It has lots of great moments, but doesn’t quite add up to a great movie — but it’s good.<\/p>\n Visually, it’s stunningly beautiful. Musically, it was the best soundtrack of the year (my favourite track is “An Unexpected Party”). I appreciated the humour — the thirteen dwarves who unexpectedly show up and help themselves to a meal at Bilbo’s house, the trolls who try to cook the dwarves over a fire.<\/p>\n The first half is more interesting. After that things are a bit too reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings<\/strong> — attacks by orcs, a visit to Rivendell, a chat with Saruman. There are also too many times when they’re falling from great heights and surviving at impossible odds.<\/p>\n Basically the story is stretched a bit too thin — they’re still far from their goal at the end of the movie.<\/p>\n Frodo’s appearance seemed natural rather than opportunistic.<\/p>\n The goblin king is wonderfully disgusting.<\/p>\n One special effect that wasn’t quite as special as the rest was Radagast on his sled pulled by rabbits.<\/p>\n All these actors reprise their roles from The Lord of the Rings<\/strong>. Ian Holm (Brazil<\/strong>) plays old Bilbo and Elijah Wood (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/strong>) plays Frodo. Christopher Lee (Hugo<\/strong><\/a>) plays Saruman. Hugo Weaving (The Matrix<\/strong><\/a>) plays Elrond and Cate Blanchett (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button<\/strong>) plays Galadriel.<\/p>\n Directed by Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King<\/strong>).<\/p>\n The sequel is now in theatres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" {4\/5} “I fear this quest has set in motion forces we do not yet understand.” Gandalf the Grey comes to the home of Bilbo Baggins to offer him an unexpected opportunity — go on an adventure. A group of dwarves has decided now is the time to reclaim their home, which has been taken over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9,6,5],"class_list":["post-4302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-fantasy","tag-movie","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4302"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16658,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4302\/revisions\/16658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}