Bilbo Baggins, an inhabitant of the Shire, leads a comfortable, well-ordered life. He loves his food, his drink, and his garden. He's relatively well-off and, at least at the beginning of the story, well-respected. Imagine his surprise and chagrin, then, when one day a famous wizard named Gandalf knocks on his big round door and informs Bilbo that he's recruiting people for an adventure and would like him to join up. Bilbo is having none of it, though. He regards adventures as "nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner." He refuses Gandalf and shows him out, whereupon Gandalf carves a symbol on the door. Not long afterward, the dwarves begin to arrive. Soon there are 13 of them and, aided by Gandalf, they commandeer his house, eat up his food and drink, and stay up most of the night singing. They assume that Bilbo will accept their job offer of "burglar," but Bilbo continues to refuse. When he awakes the next morning, however, and discovers the wizard and the dwarves gone, Bilbo finds that he has undergone a change of heart. He runs out the door and soon catches up with them on the road, ready and willing to aid the dwarves in their quest to challenge the dragon Smaug and regain their lost power.
Thus the stage is set for director Peter Jackson's new picture, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. For a couple of weeks before seeing the movie I was wondering whether or not I'd really like it. I'd loved all three installments of his The Lord of the Rings trilogy (aka LOTR), and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is (along with LOTR) one of my absolute favorite books. The film review I read, however, wasn't all that positive, taking the view that the movie is much too long and not that compelling. Well, I needn't have worried. It held my attention throughout and turned out to be highly enjoyable. If you're any kind of Tolkien (or Peter Jackson) fan, you won't go wrong by seeing it.
Just to make sure that we're all on the same page, let me say a few words about how The Hobbit is related to The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a "prequel" to LOTR, his great life work, and this introductory story introduces most of the main characters and sets in motion the events that are carried through in the trilogy. We might ask this question about Tolkien: Are The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy Christian works? The answer is yes, as evidenced by the existence of such books as Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware's Finding God in the Lord of the Rings. (In this connection, also see the reviews of The Two Towers and The Return of the King.) However, Tolkien's strategy for revealing Christian thought is much different from that of his close friend and colleague C. S. Lewis. Tolkien, a Catholic, was instrumental in Lewis's conversion to Christianity in the 1920s. But unlike Lewis, Tolkien felt that Christian thoughts and values should be rather well hidden in literary efforts, while Lewis's methods, once he came to faith, showed Christian ideals as much more obvious and transparent. The result is that in Tolkien's work we see a very strong focus on the struggle between good and evil, on the need for heroism, sacrifice, and loyalty, and these themes are well borne out in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. However, we don't see any obvious Christian symbols.
The film is certainly well acted, with Martin Freeman (Dr. Watson in PBS Masterpiece productions of Sherlock Holmes) as Bilbo Baggins, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Christopher Lee as chief wizard Saruman, Cate Blanchett as the elf-queen Galadriel, and Andy Serkis as (the prototype of) the quasi-animated Gollum. The actors who play the 13 dwarves are most impressive. The production is stunning overall, though purists will note that director Jackson has added two battle scenes not present in the novel, presumably in an attempt to make The Hobbit darker and more like The Lord of the Rings. The picture is rated PG-13; we don't see much blood, but we do see a lot of battle violence.
This one question remains: Why should adults see this film, particularly those who don't much care for fantasy? The answer lies in the character of Bilbo Baggins, who is perhaps a type of everyman. Most of us don't like our comfortable lives or routines to be disturbed or, for that matter, for discomfort to play any part in our lives at all. Gandalf the wizard, in one of the quintessential statements in the film, says this about Bilbo's admirable character: "I've found it's the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay." Most of us, everyday folk like Bilbo, can rise to the occasion if we have to – and do potentially great things in the process.
My Rating: 3 ¼ stars
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