This weekend, the husband and I went to see The Hobbit. I'd been looking forward to it since I heard it was being made, as I'm a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien. I've read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings multiple times, and I love the Lord of the Rings movies.

So I was excited! We went to the earliest Sunday matinee to try and avoid what we figured would be ridiculous crowds (The Hobbit made by far the most money over the weekend), and it worked! There were very few people in the theater. That also might have had something to do with our choosing to see the old-school non-3D, 24 frames per second version instead of the new, fancy one. 3D gives the husband headaches, and I've heard that the higher frame rate looks weird and jumpy. From lots of comments I've seen on social networks, we made the right choice.

If nothing else, The Hobbit is a pretty movie. As I expected, it was very well-made (I guess it had to be for all of the money they spent on it). The whole movie (okay, three movies) is a flashback from the day of Bilbo's 111th birthday party, the same day that Lord of the Rings begins. (Which, of course, is not the same day on which the novel begins.) It was nice, though unnecessary, to see Frodo and the familiar older version of Bilbo. Most other throwbacks to the Lord of the Rings movies were exactly the same, too, which lands you back in the same world in which you've already spent nine hours.

And prepare yourself for nine hours more! Because Peter Jackson saw fit to split The Hobbit, a book not half the length of any of the three Lord of the Rings books, into three movies, which I think is entirely ridiculous. Here's what I didn't like about this movie: they expanded and moved around storylines to fill the (almost) three hours. I was convinced that they'd entirely invented characters and scenes, but a friend who had very recently read The Hobbit corrected me: they just made a big deal out of something merely mentioned by Tolkien. For those of you who have read the novel, I won't ruin the surprise(s).

Overall, I think The Hobbit is a good movie. It's certainly worth seeing, whether or not you've read the book. In fact, I think you'll enjoy it more if you haven't read the book, as the discrepancies I mentioned earlier won't bother you. If you have read the book, I'm sure you're already chomping at the bit to see the movie, and as long as you're not picky about every little plot point (like I guess I am), you should thoroughly enjoy it.