THE HOBBIT (M) is a perfect example of how to make a short story long. With the underperforming and underwhelming KING KONG and THE LOVELY BONES, Peter Jackson has returned to the Shire, with its elves and fairies, and Brit/Oz/Kiwi cast, and made a sumptuous snore of cinematic somnolence

The film is so vivid thanks to a faster frame rate, so real as to appear unreal, but alas, lacking any skerrick of the surreal that may have lifted its plodding, pedestrian pace.

The first hour, which translates to the first third of this first part of a trilogy, plays like a pixie pastoral, a preamble that is stretched to drama numbing sloth that makes test cricket look like speed racing. The pastures and fields and meadows of Middle earth are starkly lush, but my idea of entertainment is not watching the grass grow.

Goblins, giants, trolls, dwarves and dragons should be the stuff of high adventure, but this bloated bag of bones is the bane of action as it bogs down in the marshes of Mogadon, a veritable nadir of narrative.

As Bilbo Baggins, Martin Freeman seems bemused and bewildered, and Ian McKellen’s reprise of the wizard Gandolf seems like a phoned in performance.

All the ring leaders are back from The Lord of the Rings, screenwriters, director, composer, cinematographer, riding the bandwagon of infantile fantasy, stretching audiences bladders rather than stretching their own imagination. Bored with the Rings? Look out, here comes another ring cycle. Rectum.

© Richard Cotter

24th December, 2012

Tags- Sydney Movie Reviews- THE HOBBIT, Peter Jackson, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter