Addicted to magic

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit. You don’t say? One can easily see that by his badly done hair, his peppy little look and splay furry feet. Other than that he’s quite a nice, clean and well-mannered hobbit living in Shire, the hobbits’ hometown in Middle Earth. It really looks like the Smurfs’ village.

 

One day while Bilbo’s gazing carefree, Gandalf the Gray wizard pays him an ostensibly feckless visit. Later however a bunch of ruffie dwarves occupy almost invade his house for no apparent reason. Thorin, their leader, is determined to take back his homeland that was destroyed by a greedy dragon obsessed with gold. Honestly, I don’t need to comment on the vanity of a dragon’s avaricious nature..

Anyway, the dwarves abuse Bilbo’s home perks and devoured all his stock of meat snacks (at least they washed the dishes). They arrogantly ask him to follow them to their quest, as if they do him a favour. Even so the kind hobbit accepts for the sake of old times - he used to be an adventurer despite his looks - and joins them.

Of course, evil is surprisingly active these days and the fellowship almost asks for it. They fall on some fat Trolls, bearing the flu virus and eating anything gross. Not the best scene to watch while having pop-corn... How nice; Gandalf saved the day again like the canary in a coal mine. Mister leader Thorin only knows to play grumpy far so. Not much of a warrior huh?

 

Later they are jumped on by orcs on wargs, but they manage to escape thanks to the looney brown wizard Radagast, old pal of Gandalf. Thorin’s been dawdling again... In fact during almost the whole campaign he merely gives meaningless orders and then refuses to ask the Elves for help because suddenly recalls that they’ve been away some time 600 years ago. Hey snooty, you’re not exactly the king of everything!

Eventually Gandalf leads Thorin to Rivendell, as a nice tricky old bastard wizzy he is. They look too dirty and messed up to appear before the eternally glamorous elves. There Gandalf meets Lord Elrond, Lady Galadriel and the not so pleasant Saruman the White wizard. My strong guess is that if Gandalf wasn’t Gandalf he’d really fancy the blond sorceress.

Meanwhile the dwarves slip away as the council expectedly does not approve their roundabouts. Many beautiful beings stand in their way like stone giants and filthy orcs. Bilbo realizes he’s got to do the daily home cleaning and decides to leave, but he’s lost. Like this wasn’t enough, he encounters the renowned slimy creature called Gollum. The Gollum’s split personality manifests while it attempts to beat Bilbo in a game of riddles. I won’t comment on what happened here because it was interesting to watch. What is important is that Bilbo changed his mind and came back to the dwarves. Hobbits are not quite stable characters, don’t ever marry one! You’ll suffer.

Once things have escalated to a weird manhunt and as we’ve met all semi-sane creature of the planet, there we got the final encounter. Dwarves and orcs are to fight. Of course the first are hopeless and Gandalf saves the day again. Ok, it’s become trivial. Bilbo saves Thorin from being butchered by the big Orc’s axe and in the end Gandalf recovers his life. Now you tell me this dwarf is a leader? I mean, I wouldn’t bet on him in an MTV reality!

While waiting for the next part of the trilogy: it’s a plot with some noticeable vacuums and it doesn’t let you sympathize any of the dwarves. They live, they die, we don’t give a damn; we know nothing about their personality. As always, screenplay a la Peter Jackson is a job well done.