[TheMisfortuneTeller]

Many thanks to Boromir88 and Bethberry for the humorous links. After suffering through two-hours and forty five minutes of this bloated turkey -- not to mention two days of intestinal flu -- I really needed the laughs.

My Chinese wife tried to read The Hobbit in English once, and never managed to get past Chapter Six: "Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire." After viewing this miserable excuse for a movie, I told her: "See? You don't have to feel so bad now. Peter Jackson reportedly speaks and writes English and has been over all these stories innumerable times, and even with a half-a-billion-dollar budget to squander, he couldn't get past Chapter Six either!" My wife liked getting out of the routine of daily life for a few hours, though, and so appreciated the escapism of the film, even though the guy eating popcorn in the seat behind her reminded her of mice raiding the pantry. When I told her that Ian Holm (as the 111-year-old Bilbo the Older, with nothing meaningful to do or say) looked to me like a 50-year-old with either a face-lift or a post-production Photoshop version of one, she told me that, from her female point of view, she thought Cate Blanchett looked like Sharon Stone in Basic Instict 2. "And she didn't even cross her legs, either!" I added.

And Elijah Wood as Frodo going to the mailbox? Why?

Even I could do the arithmetic and divide The Hobbit's 19 slim chapters by three movies and get 6+ chapters per movie, so I knew going in that the eagles would again do their ornithological interpretation of Deus Ex Machina and swoop down to save the day -- again -- just in the nick of time. I didn't, however, count on Peter Jackson taking the "hanging over the edge of the abyss" cliché to the point where not just Bilbo Baggins (in one scene) but the entire company found themselves literally hanging over the edge of yet another cliff clinging to the branches of a single tree. Naturally, no one really fell to their deaths; yet even if they had, Gandalf would have just passed his hand over their closed eyes -- like he did with Thorin Oakenshield after a warg chewed him up and spit him out -- and their lovely bones would magically rejoin the living in a heartbeat.

What unadulterated crap. Not just the unnecessary and pointless Radaghast the Brown, but practically everyone in this film wound up with bird-droppings in their beards -- even the ones who didn't have beards. In their defense, though, Bilbo (the younger) and Gollum did have a few moments together towards the end where something approaching characterization with dialogue happened. Even there, however, Peter Jackson couldn't help having Gollum look -- again -- at his own reflection in the water (Return of the King scene rip-off! Check!) and Gollum's truly gratuitous bludgeoning of an injured goblin (who actually had suffered from a dizzying fall) seemed excessively tasteless to me even for Peter Jackson.

I could go on for hours deconstructing this farce, but the film just doesn't hold enough interest for me to bother. A few barely passable lines of dialogue here and there do not rescue or redeem this over-extended spoiler prologue to -- wait for it! -- a glimpse of the entire dragon (not just his foot or tail or eyeball) -- which might occur either one or two years from now. Really: a two-hour-and-forty-minute teaser trailer which basically boils down to this: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey never has any adventure or does anything unexpected.

As the stomach turns ...