Simon Dillon reviews the first in the new Middle-Earth trilogy

As The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are more or less my favourite books of all time, expectations for any film adaptation are ludicrously high. Peter Jackson scored nothing less than a triumph with his take on The Lord of the Rings, but reviews for the first of his three-part version of The Hobbit have been a lot more mixed. Could the film really be too long? Was the controversial decision to shoot in 48 frames per second an innovation too far?

To the second question, I cannot reply definitively as my first viewing has been in 24 frames per second. However, my inner Luddite (and my professional experience) squirms at the prospect of upping a frame rate that has worked perfectly well since 1927. I was always worried it would end up looking like behind the scenes television footage instead of film, and from the reports I have heard that seems to be a serious problem for the 48 FPS version.

Regarding the first question, the answer is: it depends which version of The Hobbit you are expecting. Shortly after The Lord of the Rings was published, Tolkien attempted to rewrite The Hobbit in a more grown-up way, in a similar vein to Rings. He abandoned this idea after a few chapters as he concluded such a version "wasn't The Hobbit", but Jackson seems to have had another stab, integrating events from Rings appendixes that were occurring concurrently with the familiar treasure hunt adventure plot. To that end, we still get the familiar tale of wizard Gandalf and thirteen dwarfs recruiting mild-mannered hobbit Bilbo Baggins in an attempt to retake stolen treasure from the vicious dragon Smaug. But we also get the rise of the Necromancer, the backstory of the wars with the orcs, and so on. Depending on your point of view, this is either a bold expansion or an unnecessary stretching out of events to artificially create a new trilogy.

I take the former view. I think as far as the book was concerned, Tolkien was correct to abandon his attempts to make it more akin to Rings, but as a film An Unexpected Journey works brilliantly and is a fine addition to Jackson's Middle-Earth pictures. In keeping with the tone of the book, it is a good deal more light-hearted than Rings, but the darker additions and tweaks for the most part meld well into the overall plot. Yes, it is too long. The first half could certainly have done with a trim. But by the time I reached the magnificent, soaring finale, I simply didn't care about overlength.

Performances are all splendid - from recurring characters like Ian McKellen's Gandalf and Hugo Weaving's Elrond to newcomer Martin Freeman and his quite brilliant take on Bilbo. Of the thirteen dwarfs, Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield makes the strongest impression. His relationship with Bilbo is at the heart of the story, and whilst he takes longer to really value Bilbo in the book (during events that are now in film two), his gradual realisation that the hobbit is vital to the success of their quest is actually quite moving.

Many of the other dwarfs fail to register as strongly just because there are so many of them. Let's face it: that was always going to be a problem with any adaptation of The Hobbit. But James Nesbit is particularly fun to watch. Elsewhere former Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy pops up in an intriguingly weird part (Brown wizard Radagast - mentioned fleetingly in the book). Rings alumni Elijah Wood, Ian Holm, Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee pop up briefly too, which is nice (if pointless if you aren't sold on the expansions into Rings territory). And yet, man-of-the-match as far as the cast is concerned once again goes to Andy Serkis as Gollum. The Riddles in the Dark sequence is probably the strongest and most dramatic part of the entire film, and obviously provides the link between this story and The Lord of the Rings.

It goes without saying that the visual effects are phenomenal, the New Zealand scenery stunning, and Peter Jackson's handling of the action sequences second to none. Howard Shore's music is worthy of a special mention as he builds beautifully on the scores from the previous films - mixing old themes with some amazing new ones. The tremendous set pieces in the second half - including the stone giants which I am so pleased were not ignored - are edge of the seat thrilling.

On a moral/spiritual note, this celebrates courage, loyalty, friendship and heroism in a pleasingly old-fashioned way, and the themes of greed that become vitally important in the latter part of the novel are foreshadowed here to good effect. The understated lessons of The Hobbit are as important today as they were when the novel was first published in 1937, and those lessons are accurately reflected in the film.

To summarise, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is flawed by overlength in the first half, but as I said earlier, the second half is so good that by the end I didn't mind. The film is peppered with enough incredible moments that more than justify seeking it out on the biggest screen possible - even if you think it is suffering from appendicitus and needs editorial surgery. Incidentally, my eight-year-old (who has read the book), emphatically didn't think it was too long, so don't let that necessarily put you off taking the children.