And this is coming from someone who has intensely loved the Hobbit for 30 years.

My biggest problem with the Lord of the Rings trilogy was how characters were sacrificed in the name of plot. I refer here not to Tom Bombadil, but Faramir and Treebeard. So that the stakes could be raised, the tension heightened, or the Hobbits made awesome, both had brilliant characters reduced to idiots. This has absolutely not been the case with the Hobbit.

It is true that the Hobbit is telling two stories here: The far more lighthearted fare of thirteen dwarves and a Hobbit going after Dragon Treasure, and the heavier, world shaking matter of investigating the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, which is only ever briefly alluded to in the original children's tale. The first story belongs to Bilbo and Thorin, the second to Gandalf, and both are, in my opinion, brilliant. Could they have been better integrated? Possibly, but off of the top of my head I couldn't tell you how.

What a lot of the critique that has been thrown at the Hobbit completely fails to understand is the difference in tone between the two works. The Hobbit is not, nor does it try to be, as dark and pressing as the Lord of the Rings. It's characters are more cartoony, its fights sillier. In this it perfectly matches the tone of the book. People deriding the Hobbit for its silliness are like the comic book fans who deride the Adam West Batman for making their genre "cartoony" when in fact the Adam West show perfectly fit the Batman mythos of the time.

I loved the first Hobbit movie and fully expect to enjoy the others, but I suspect that is because I first loved the Hobbit itself. (it was read to me before the Lord of the Rings, when I was a little tyke.) Those who wanted another Lord of the Rings will be disappointed, but in the opinion of this true believer, if Jackson had tried to deliver that, then the shame you are talking about would have been warranted.

As is, I enjoyed it immensely.