Peter Jackson returns to Middle Earth nearly a decade after the Lord of the Rings trilogy garnered $3 billion and 17 Oscar wins with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Ambitious in its attempts to recapture the same grandeur and spectacle, the film is only a shadow of its predecessors as it spreads a thin narrative across a nearly three-hour running time.

At its best, the film is a reminder of why we love the world of Tolkien so much and the world Jackson and company create is definitely pleasant to spend time in once again, but the narrative is marred down by a seemingly endless barrage of subplots and tangential scenes which slow the film to a crawl at times without adding anything new to the world.

Opening with the comforting faces of Ian Holm and Elijah Wood as Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, narration introduces us to the world of the Shire 60 years before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring. Peter Jackson moves the opening at a deliberate pace, and it’s almost twenty minutes before the opening lines from The Hobbit are spoken.

Bilbo, played as a younger Hobbit by the wonderful Martin Freeman, meets Gandalf (Ian McKellen) who introduces him to a group of thirteen merry dwarves, led by the serious one of the bunch, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). The dwarves have lost their home in the Lonely Mountain to a vicious dragon named Smaug, and enlist the reluctant Bilbo to join their adventure. It’s fifteen characters to keep track of and is sort of a nightmare, as I can only imagine those who haven’t read the novel will be hopelessly lost.

It has to be noted the film was shot at 48fps (frames per second), and in non-technical speak that means your eyes are unwittingly seeing twice as many pictures as the usual 24fps. Visually, it take a while to get used to, the opening moments in Bag End are startling, as Bilbo appears to be moving at a very rapid pace. Closeups are a bit of a nightmare on the eyes, and some more CG-heavy shots look like a video game compared to what we’re used to with The Lord of the Rings. Still, the landscapes of New Zealand and much of the film do look marvelous in the format, but it throws an unneeded wrench in the visual spectacle of the series.

Apart from the comfort of seeing Gandalf and the gorgeous Middle Earth landscape to the spectacular Howard Shore soundtrack, the first half of the film is a bit of a mess. Jackson does his best to bring back familiar faces, but the pace is exhaustingly slow. To fill out the running time, Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo Del Toro delved into the many appendices of Tolkien to stuff the film with subplots and new characters. Radagast the Brown, an animal-loving wizard played by Sylvester McCoy, is particularly silly riding along on his sleigh pulled by lightning past bunnies.

Narrative-wise, Jackson relies quite a lot on the structure of The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey features many of the same narrative-beats. Whether it’s a terrible scene of the group caught in a rock giant battle on a mountain cliff, or a refreshing return to Rivendell with the return of Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), and Saruman (Christopher Lee), it all feels a bit repetitive.

A lot of these scenes play as if they were an afterthought to the trilogy that came before it, I know it’s unfair to solely compare The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to films that came a decade before, but it’s unavoidable. Most scenes feel as if they are better placed as deleted scenes on a DVD, and even the film’s most spectacular, triumphant moments feel all-too familiar.

The film is still a great achievement in terms of the visual splendor of Middle Earth, as the crew that creates the world of Lord of the Rings is back in top form. It’s impossible not to delight watching the group walk across the Misty Mountains to Howard Shore’s stellar score, and apart from moments like these, the standout has got to be a ten minute scene between Bilbo and Gollum. Andy Serkis proves once again he is a true master at work in what might be his best performance to date, as he breathes perhaps the only fresh life into the film, as things pick up from his first appearance.

The ragtag band of dwarves never really is able to establish themselves like the Fellowship did, and the film does tend to drag when they’re front and center. Jackson clearly relies on McKellen to come in and bring life back into the film time and time again, and in terms of action The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey gets sloppy and silly early on, only recovering in the film’s final act. Threats to the group come in the form of singular moments of peril from angry Orcs and Goblins, in fact, the most menacing figure here, the Necromancer, doesn’t even appear.

If nothing else, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey reminds us of why we love the The Lord of the Rings trilogy so much. At its best it’s a copy of a fully-realized, gorgeous, breathtaking vision, but it never adds up to much. Even with an imperfect, incomplete beginning to a story that screams to be one film, not three, it would be impossible to deny the wonder of this series, and with the many issues aside, it is comforting to revisit Middle Earth again.

Grade: C+

Rated: PG-13 (for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens in theaters on December 14, 2012.