Review of The Hobbit (1977) by Daniel W — 01 Aug 2008

So I'm not sure how old I was when I first saw this movie. It was sometime in the distant and hazy '80s; I was in perhaps second grade, or thereabouts, anyway. In those exotic days, the Altadena Library (there's only the one branch) used to play films on Fridays at 3:30. When I later volunteered there, it was videos, but when I was a child, it was [i]films[/i]. As in, they'd haul out a projector. (Which is actually a much easier way to show movies to a couple dozen kids, as it happens.) Mostly, we watched Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin (I've seen a lot of each), but one day, someone got ambitious and decided that we needed to see [i]The Hobbit[/i]. Every reel of it. It may well have lasted until after the library itself, you know, closed. But we had a great deal of fun with it.

As we all know, [i]The Hobbit[/i] is the story of, well, a hobbit. One Bilbo Baggins. A wizard called Gandalf the Grey decided that Bilbo was the thief he needed to send along with an expedition of dwarfs who were going to defeat Smaug, the great dragon. It's actually a rather silly premise--it would make more sense if Bilbo (one of the few Tolkien characters whose name I can remember) actually had a reputation as a thief. However, he's pretty much known for being this hobbit who kind of sits there. Anyway, he goes off with the dwarfs regardless and has all sorts of adventures, in a Tolkien kind of way, and finds a magic ring that will become important one day, and things like that. Oh, and the dragon. (Whose name I can remember because his name is Smaug, and I always thought that was funny for a character who, you know, breathes smoke and fire.).

This movie does not hold up well on rewatching, I'm afraid. I watched it with Heather last night, and it was awfully silly. The animation isn't very good, for one thing, and the character design isn't, either. Some of the songs are okay--all but "The Greatest Adventure" have lyrics by Tolkien himself; maybe he should have written poetry instead of novels. Or, you know, both at once. The voicework is good--or at least, the voice [i]cast[/i] is good. Orson Bean as Bilbo. John Huston as Gandalf. Otto Preminger as the Elven King. And so forth. I won't say that any of them seem to have put any particular effort into their performances, but hey, they're there.

Yes, I know. I can hear you getting all up in arms at me. The worse when I tell you that [i]The Hobbit[/i] is the only Tolkien book I've ever been able to get through, and that not in years. (I should really reread it, not that I'm getting rid of my copy if I don't like it; it was my dad's.) I can remember three character names from this book, and [i]Lord of the Rings[/i] does not add substantially to that number. I don't care much for the dialogue, either; I don't think it ever occurred to Tolkien that people in the past spoke just as casually as people do now, only using different words. And he never did know when to just stop writing, a skill that is rather important to any good writer.

I still have fond childhood memories of this movie; rewatching it doesn't take those away, for once. Those were almost always happy afternoons, there in the library. And going to Sharon's house afterward was the great treat of my week--and I haven't spoken to Sharon since perhaps '90. I remember how that room smelled, the pattern on the walls, the steps to get up to the stage, the size of the screen. I remember the film getting rewound between reels, and the chance to go to the bathroom or drink cold water from the water fountain. All those memories are still intact, even if my fondness for the movie is not.