A journey is about to begin and you've been invited along, through the view of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) of course! Throughout The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and its inevitable sequels, you will follow Mr. Baggins as he braves many dangers on his unexpected journey, while trying to help a handful of dwarves and a wizard. It all starts when Gandalf (Ian McKellen), a wizard, knocks on Bilbo's door and attempts to persuade him into joining the journey. After he refused, Gandalf invites the dwarves anyway, Thorin (Richard Armitage), Balin (Ken Stott), Dwalin (Graham McTavish) just to name several of the thirteen, and it escalates from there. Bilbo decides to go on the journey, and the movie depicts his challenges along the way.

This movie starts in a made up land called The Shire, where the hobbits live, which is located in Middle Earth. This is where the movie takes place. The many sets they filmed with were intricate and represent the areas remarkably. They had much detail and represent the many lands located within Middle Earth excellently. The music in the background of the scenes was chosen well, and, with most scenes, helped with the feelings the creators were trying to portray. The costumes look like they fit the time period and are well designed. The special effects are excellent and look real. Overall, the creators of the movie did a very good job in choosing the music to go with each scene, and with costumes and special effects that were very well designed, the movie, in terms of looks, is great.

The actors and actresses cast in this movie did excellent jobs portraying their characters and looked believable. Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman in particular were brilliant in this movie, and were the best choices that could've been made for their characters. They showed emotion when they should to make their rolls believable, and were just great with their acting overall. However, Barry Humphries (Great Goblin) for example, was a bit under par with his acting. There were a couple instances when his acting was unbelievable, and his tone didn't go with the mood of the scene. For the most part, the acting was superb and made the entire movie more convincing.

As far as most movies that are based off of books go, this one is pretty good with sticking to the book. However, there are some key points where they deviated from the book, not that it changes the end outcome at all. For instance, Saruman and Galadriel do not show up at Rivendale, or even in The Hobbit at all in the book. Also, there were many scenes with the goblins that were changed, such as the circumstances that they were captured, of Bilbo finding the ring, and basically the entire encounter with the Great Goblin. They were pretty much unnecessary except to make it a bit more dramatic. However, as most movies go, this one strays very little from the book, and on the few occasions that it does, it's to try to make the movie more entertaining.

This movie is directed at, and probably best suited for, people around thirteen to twenty-five. This is because the movie is complicated and might be considered boring by people younger than thirteen as they may not be able to follow the movie completely. Also, it is an adventure and action film based off of a book made for young adults, and so people older than twenty-five, depending on their own personal likes, also may not be familiar with it. This movie is rated PG-13, and could be unsuitable for people under the age of thirteen for this reason as well.