The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Directed by Peter Jackson
2012, Warner Bros. Pictures
2 hours, 49 minutes

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Terrible film with no stakes, overreliant on spectacle driven primarily by CGI sequences. The characters are unlikeable and don’t mesh well together, the tone flipping between whimsical and serious as the story moves back and forth between the story of The Hobbit and material informed largely by The Silmarillion. It’s as though the film expects nostalgia and the legacy of Lord of the Rings to be enough to carry it through, making no effort to tell any kind of compelling or coherent story—as evidenced by problematic elements in the story, including fatphobia and antisemitism.