Review by Pete Mason

After watching “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first of three films that precede “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, there are two ways of looking at the two-and-a-half-hour visual masterpiece:

1.) The movie is amazing and brings Middle Earth to life, telling a great story and leading up to the next film due out in 2013.

2.) The film is too long, expands on J.R.R. Tolkien’s original story to the point of exhaustion and is a lame start to the first of three films based on one book.

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