The Hobbit: An Unexpected Pleasure.

 

The film opens with a very old man addressing someone with a silly name that turns out to be his nephew. What the significance of the nephew is we do not learn. Perhaps he's in another film somewhere. Anyway. The old 'hobbit', Bilbo, has decided to use his time constructively in planning for an enormous party to which clearly many hobbits have been invited by... writing a 250 page memoir. Frodo, who doesn't know that the party is also for his birthday, decides to make up for this by going and sitting under a tree. Meanwhile a hoard of party-planners wearing invisible horse stockings borrowed from Rohan scurry about doing all the work.

Bilbo – who in The Lord of the Rings is described as looking the same at 111 as he did at 50 – is now so puffy and ancient that he is being played by Dame Judi Dench*, and he provides an illustration to show that the evil power of the ring has given him a different shaped nose (young Bilbo having refused a prosthesis on the grounds that it would be like 'putty scraped over too much head'). He tells us the story of EreborEreborEreborEreborEreborEreborErebor, a Dwarvish kingdom assailed by disembodied parts of a dragon. We meet the leader of the diaspora of exiled Dwarves, Thorin, who was so traumatised by the dragon's attack that he seeks refuge in Star Trek movies and walks around dressed as a Klingon.

A magic smoke ring carries us back 60 years to when Bilbo's nose was slightly more pixie-like. Gandalf appears and for no obvious reason invites Bilbo on an adventure. Film Bilbo is less worried about offending wizards and totally neglects to invite Gandalf to tea, but at least he has installed special windows that make the eyeballs of nosey people extra large and alarming. We are not treated to the view from the other side of the glass that makes Bilbo look like he has a tiny head and an enormous neck. Gandalf leaves chuckling at the vision.

Dwarves start appearing. Ever on the look out for commercial gain the Dwarves have sold all their hoods to the rangers on the Shire borders and all their tassels to a less than salubrious 'gentleman's' establishment in Bree. So it is that they have nothing to hang in Bilbo's hall other than weapons, and it's probably a good idea they put them down before they hurt anyone. The film Dwarves appear to be largely a parade of bearded, super-powered imbeciles, with those powers focused on an admittedly impressive ability to catch plates without looking at them. Thorin would nonetheless take them over an army 'because they turned up'. This logic is irrefutable, since presumably he is comparing them to an army that doesn't turn up, and despite at least one of the Dwarves being Frank Spencer they are theoretically more useful than an non-existent army, if only slightly.

With the Dwarves being a motley collection of slightly middle-class tradesmen with rubber faces, it's clear that Bilbo has been invited along to provide some much needed gravitas. Gandalf, on the other hand, has clearly chosen him because he is 'also a Took', which we know from other movies means “clownish moron”. Unfortunately, he can't pass the all-important Thorin “showing up” test because they're having the meeting in his front room and he's already there. This leads to Bilbo having to engineer as many showing up opportunities as possible in order to prove to Thorin he belongs, even though in order to keep Showing Up he does occasionally have to run away or over sleep.

Bilbo accidentally joins the quest after he spends the morning trying to fly Middle-Earth's most disappointing kite. Realising after 20 minutes of unimpressive fluttering that it is in fact his contract, he decides to sign it and Show Up. Thorin makes a small mental note, not for the last time.

The story then proceeds for a while along similar lines to the book. Film Gandalf and Film Thorin bicker about general Elf-racism, leading Gandalf to temporarily block Thorin on Facebook and storm off. The talking wallet is thankfully replaced by snot, and Bilbo is caught during a slightly pony rescue mission. The cockney trolls play rough and bag up the Dwarves, but Gandalf shows us his patented Mobile Sun ™ (later seen hovering behind the Rohirrim as they attack the armies of Mordor from the North) which he's been hiding in a rock (the casual viewer might think this is just letting the dawn sun shine through, but from the Trollshaws that would naturally still have been behind the nearby Misty Mountains at that point) and turns the trolls to stone.

Thorin then shows further hostility to Elves as he tries to refuse one of their swords, but this is because he thinks he's a Klingon and the Elves keep dressing as Vulcans to annoy him. Bilbo gets a sword seemingly made from the compressed bones of the trolls' victims.

Earlier on we were introduced to wizard Sylvester the McCoy. They insist on calling him a different name, but he's just being Sylvester McCoy so the character name isn't important. He saves his prickly hedgehog friend, but the presence of big spiders mercifully distract them from doing the congratulatory Disney song and dance number they were obviously planning.

McCoy eventually meets up with the company, where he pulls a few faces and hands over a portentous sword. Gandalf makes a logical leap and decides that the presence of large dogs shows that the company is being hunted. The viewers by now are aware that Thorin is indeed being pursued by the remnants of Guillermo Del Toro's involvement in the project. Del Toro's imagination repeatedly impinges on the film and tries to bugger up the story, but ultimately cannot stop the Dwarves reaching Rivendell, where we meet Smiley Elrond, Smirking Elrond's more cheerful brother. Smiley Elrond helps by taking the Dwarves to his special moon rumpus room, where he goes to enjoy a glass of moonshine and play moon-twister, watches Moon on DVD, moons the passing Elves on the cliffs below, and listens to Shepherd Moons by Enya, as well as reading the occasional moon-rune in June (in the back of a spoon), which he does now to reveal the secrets of the Lonely Mountain's secret door. Laying the map on his special moon air-hockey table, Elrond reveals that the Dwarves are in a desperate race against time. For some reason he is then moderately surprised when they leave the next day.

As the Dwarves prepare to sneak off, we are reintroduced to some old faces. Very much the oldest face on offer is Saruman's who enjoys a brief vertical establishing shot (just to prove he can still do it) before being allowed a nice sit down. Galadriel appears to spend most of the meeting of the White Council standing on a turntable that gently wraps the bottom of her dress around her legs. This makes her so giddy she then entertains herself passing telepathic notes across her desk to Gandalf, possibly inviting him round the back of the bike sheds for a snog.

If the Film White Council appear to be ineffectual, they are at least true to the spirit of the Book White Council, which takes 400 years to establish that the Necromancer is Sauron. Three films suddenly doesn't seem quite so unreasonable in comparison.

After the Dwarves survive a very literal Battle of Wounded Knee, Bilbo becomes aware that without going off anywhere, he cannot Show Up and impress Thorin. His cunning plan is thwarted by Goblins, who reveal a somewhat uncomfortable method of getting into their halls from the Front Porch (how they get back out again, this tale does not tell; possibly they have rocket packs). Fortunately, the whole Company has secretly been turned to rubber by Smiley Elrond's magic salad (justifying the otherwise mysterious focus on food while in Rivendell), allowing them to survive an increasingly unlikely series of falls onto solid rock from an assortment of precipitous heights. Bilbo, being in general about 3 inches shorter than his companions, is so small that the goblins mislay him, allowing him to bounce his way down a cliff face for the psychological fun and games of the famous “Riddles in the Floodlights” sequence.

“Down there in the floodlights lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum - as bright as brightness, except for two cute blue eyes in a thin face.”

Despite the editing out of this brief sequence...

“This time Gollum tried something a bit more difficult and unpleasant:

It can only be seen, cannot be felt

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt

It lies on stars and in the sun

It shines on the pitch of a stadium

It dazzles frogs, moths it catches

Makes shadows, discomfits badgers.

Unfortunately for Gollum Bilbo had heard that sort of thing before; and the answer was all round him any way. “Light!” he said without even scratching his head or putting on his thinking sunglasses.”

...we enjoy the confrontation before Gollum realises he's been had. Bilbo, dazzled by the underground brightness, misses his footing and slips. The tiny pilots inside the ring guide it carefully onto his outstretched finger and he disappears.

Fortunately for Bilbo, Concorde has been decommissioned for Health & Safety reasons, and instead putting on the ring has the sound of a gerbil blowing in your ear and a vague sensation of having drunk too much absinthe. Bilbo takes pity on poor Gollum, and very sensitively kicks him in the face before escaping the mountains for ever.

The Dwarves, meanwhile, have fully exploited their rubbery status in a 10 minute chase sequence in which they fall approximately half a mile down a sheer cliff, culminating in Dame Edna landing on top of them, with few ill effects. The goblins, meanwhile, are left to review their approach to security when their cunning system of rickety bridges, rotten wooden ladders and rope swings are used against them so effectively. A review is set up, headed by a senior Civil Servant, and eventually concluding that in future the goblins should build a number of wide solid platforms made of teak, that goblin security guards should be issued with tiny parachutes and that any future interrogation of prisoners should take place on the ground unless they've already had their arms cut off.

Gandalf, realising that the rubberisation spell will soon wear off, hurries the Dwarves into the daylight. There the Dwarves stand in the beautiful reddish glow of a sun that has already sunk below the mountains, and provide Bilbo with his great chance: he can now Show Up! He is slightly disappointed by Thorin's less than fulsome reaction, but the Great Dwarf makes a mental note that Bilbo Showed Up, not for the last time.

Just when everything appears to be meandering towards the End of Part One, Del Toro's imagination bursts back into the film and the Orc with the Fork ™* chases them up a tree. Gandalf places an order with EagleCabs, but it's December, and frankly there are a lot of parties and to be perfectly honest there might be a bit of a wait.

While they wait, Thorin decides to single-handedly attack the Orc horde that all 15 of them had been flying from in mortal terror moments before. We don't see this, but Gandalf's burning pine cones act like the pills on Pac-Man, and just for a few seconds the Dwarves are invincible and allowed to eat the Orcs. Bilbo decides to Show Up again, but doesn't manage to eat any Orcs before the effect wears off and he and Thorin are in mortal danger.

EagleCabs arrive just in time and drop the company on a convenient eagle heliport. Thorin turns out not to be dead, appreciates Bilbo Showing Up and gives him a hug while crying, which is particularly understandable given moments before he was being bitten in half by a wolf.

The film ends with them staring at a mountain that is still 250 miles away, revealing that Middle Earth is actually flat! This information will no doubt become crucial in the next film when Gandalf summons Great A'tuin to eat Smaug.

The Purist

 

* with thanks to @perfectlyvague