The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey...

First the good stuff. It's great to see The Hobbit (OK, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) on the big screen. Great to return to Middle Earth. Great to see a childhood favourite brought to life. The scenes with Gollum were great. And some of the big action pieces were marvellous.

(Deep breath). But now the bad stuff. It's too long. Way too long. Baggy. A baggy Baggins film. And after 2h 45mins we have barely started the adventure. And then there's the quality of the film itself. The high frame rate version we saw looked awful. The crystal clear, everything in focus format was annoying and distracting. It actually looked like a DVD extra - shot on hi def video. In a funny way the 3D worked better than it does in regular 24 frame rate films with no blurring but the fact the whole thing looked like a cheap DVD or iPhone video: this was small compensation. The acting was fine - the dwarves were fun as were Gandalf but Bilbo (Martin Freeman - much as a I love him) was basically playing it like Arthur Dent/Tim from The Office - an Englishman out of his comfort zone. Not how I see Bilbo at all.

So overall, a disappointment.