An Unexpected disappointment

We watched "The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey" on DVD last night. Unfortunately I was very disappointed. Its been many years since I read the book but I simply don't recall it being as "childlike" a tale as was presented in this movie. At times I felt as though I was watching a Shrek movie or a pantomime. In addition to that, it seemed so loooooong. Endless in fact. The movie was 169 minutes long ; thats probably longer than it took me to read the book.

The dwarfs were annoying and frankly, I didn't much care whether they found their homeland or got eaten by an Ork. Probably the latter was preferable.

The best part by far was the fairly short scene featuring Gollum - excellent animation/acting/facial expressions. A character that was both scary and pathetic simultaneously. But I also felt that the power of the Ring was not made obvious - the focus seemed more on its ability to make Bilbo invisible.

 It transpired this was only part 1. The director/producer obviously was confident enough to think that we would love this movie so much that we would return to watch the sequel when it comes out at the end of 2013. I would not be so sure...