We just picked up the video of ‘The Hobbit’ and I must confess I was underwhelmed.

The film is cinematographically gorgeous, with beautiful landscapes, camera work, costumes, makeup, effects, etc. If anything, it is superior in those respects to the LOTR trilogy. It’s clear the state of the art has advanced.

On the other hand, to me, it fails in the primary purpose of any film, to tell a story well. I found the characterizations poorly done, the acting mechanical, and the story seemed to drag interminably from one improbable fight scene to another. Some of the injokes seemed overdone and some scenes unecessarily prolonged, and the pacing and rhythm of the story seemed to falter, to jump and drag in fits and starts. Most important, the action sequences and battle scenes seemed to be entirely unrealistic, not to mention dragged out to the point of boredom. Even a fantasy should allow you to willing suspend your disbelief. Physical combat with medieval weapons must have been exhausting, and the battle scenes in the trilogy were believable even if they weren’t realistic. (After all, none of us has actually witnessed a medieval battle.) But this film just didn’t ring true, these guys could fight forever without taking any casualties while racking up a phenomenal body count. It was like a cartoon war.

There’s one other thing I found particularly jarring. The Gandalf character’s appearance seemed to vary throughout the film. When you first see him he looks different from the Ian Mckellen wizard in the trilogy. Later on, the familiar face appears, but occasionally the intruder makes an appearance! I suspect that as the film was shot certain scenes had to be redone, and perhaps the actor or the makeup artist was not available and substitutes had to be employed. But it is sloppy film-making, and compared to the trilogy, it is impossible to ignore.

There is one more nit-pick: The major characters are visibly older than in the earlier films. This is unavoidable, I suppose, time passes and people do age, but somehow, some more effort could have been employed to get past this continuity issue. I found it strangely unsettling, like running into a high-school girl friend after many years of separation.

I was disappointed.