The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

2013 • 169 minutes

About this movie

Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson returns to Middle Earth with the first of three films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's enduring masterpiece. Set in Middle Earth 60 years before the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, the adventure follows the journey of Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of dwarves on a journey into wild, treacherous lands swarming with beasts of every ilk. Although their goal lies to the East, they must first escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever...Gollum. Alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo gains possession of Gollum's "precious" -- a simple, gold ring tied to the fate of all Middle Earth.

Ratings and reviews

From the terrible casting of all the new characters, the acting, to a highly unimaginative and predictable script, this inaugural video is even worse than Jackson's 2nd LOTR film (the latter of which is only worth watching for the Ents and the Legolas/Gimly banter). Sorry, but the casting of the dwarves, Bilbo the younger, and the whole Goblin (err Ork) fiasco just don't cut it. Unless something drastically changes in the next 2 films in this series, there's no chance we'll watch them.

They should have kept this to 2 movies. All the added appendix stories really dragged the adventure of Bilbo Baggins down. Radagast, Galadriel, the Necromancer, the orc warlord, and Saruman just diverted attention from the story. It made the movie feel as long as it really was. LOTR never did that. Also, the portrayal of the dwarves was awful. With the exception of Thorin, they were all one dimensional comedic relief characters, and their action scenes were mostly pratfalls and farce. Very disappointing.

STUPID that you can only watch this movie your purchase from GOOHLE in their own site and it is not available in VUDU. Like every other movie i have bought from Wal-Mart, online or anywhere else. I want to have this movie in my VUDU collection but seems there is no way to foot that so i can watch ask 3 of them together without the hassle of switching sites. NOT IMPRESSED AT ALL!