My Official Review Of "The Hobbit"

Over the Christmas break I had the chance to go and see the new Hobbit movie.  And would you like to know what I thought? Well too bad, because I am going to tell you anyway.

The only things I really knew going in to the movie was that it was going to be very long and it was going to be very similar to every other Lord of The Rings movie made so far.  Those facts were both very accurate.  But there was more...

Cons
1.  There was a huge lack of Aragorn. Yeah, yeah, I know this is a prequel, but secretly I was hoping he would pop up through some extremely contrived dream sequence.  Sigh.
2.  Too much singing. No, I am not kidding.  I think someone broke out into song twice during this movie.  Ain't nobody got time for that!
3.  I was under the impression that the whole point of this movie was to see how "The Ring" came to be, so I was expecting a huge deal about this event.  But it was kind of like one guy dropped it and one guy picked it up. And that was it. Perhaps there is more to come in the next movie?
4.  Because we chose to not pay the equivalent of a second mortgage on our house to see it in 3D, we were punished for our frugality by being put in the tiniest theater in all of Lakeland.  Seriously, I think that theater doubles as a racquetball court between showings.  It was quite cozy in there!
5.  For how powerful Gandolf supposedly is, he is not so powerful, really.  I mean, maybe it's like Star Trek and wondering why they don't just use the transporters to move about the ship instead of walking and taking turbolifts everywhere, because I am thinking, why doesn't Gandalf just magic everyone to where they need to go instead of walking and getting eaten by Orks every 2 seconds?  Because Peter Jackson says so.
6.  It's probably just because Brian was there and he did serve a mission to Bilbao, Spain, but through the whole movie I was constantly wanting to call the guy Bilbao Baggins.  Still do! And I still will!


Pros
1.  Bilbao is played by Martin Freeman, who is also Dr. Watson in the BBC series "Sherlock" of which I have become a big fan.  Oddly enough both Watson and Bilbao have a lot in common, so it wasn't a stretch for me to accept him as a hobbit. I think he did a fine job.  And more interesting trivia is that Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock in the BBC show, is the voice of the dragon in the Hobbit. And the name of the dragon is "The Necromancer", which I forgot to put down as con #7 for being the worst name for a dragon in the history of dragon naming.
2.  The cinematography was very well done and I loved the music.  Although, the CGI got a little out of hand.  It almost reached Phantom Menace proportions at one point.
3.  I got to sit by Jacob for over 3 hours :)  Not even church allows me to do that!
4.  I cannot lie, I kinda got a kick out of knowing that Dave was being tortured by the length of this film. He is like me and got the same gene that makes us terrified of long movies.  But he lived :)
5.  Afterward we all went to Tiajuana Flats and had mexican food, including Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Flautas.  MY. FAVORITE.

So overall I would give this movie 3 out of 5 Hairy Hobbit Feet.  Same scenery, basically the same plot, same time investment, same characters as the rest of the LOTR movies, but I am still pondering whether or not the world actually needs this movie?