I saw it last week in 3D HFR....... loved it!!! I think 3D is brilliant!

Oh come on, Bryan....since when could you even count to 3?....

Terry and I saw it today....in 'glorious' 2D .... was fun.  It's been about 40 years since I last read The Hobbit .... but it all came flooding back...

Um.... The hobbit doesn't have anywhere near the coherence of LotR. It's really quite a different tale as others have said. More of a children's fairy-tale is right on the money. I thought the escape from the goblin mountain scene was so far over the top that it broke suspension of disbelief as it veered into the ridiculous. Also I thought the level of violence was creepy combined with the near complete lack of blood and gore like when Gandalf opens up the Goblin king's belly and nothing comes out. Not that I'm into gore it just was creepy like they're cutting up claymation characters  (I'm sure this was in an effort to preserve their PG-13 rating) Overall the movie was fun and the CG was incredible but it doesn't seem to have the magic of the originals.

I saw it the day it came out in 3D high speed def or whatever it's called. I never read the hobbit so I had no idea what the story was about.

I loved it. Three hours passed by fast. There was a few things that were out of place. The goblin battle and the rock golems were terrific visually but way to much in my opinion. Can't wait to see the other two movies...

Not true...Tolkien was writing the Simarillion before he did the Hobbit. It was supposed to be pseudo-independent...bu it never really was.

Watched the movie at home and felt regret that there was no end of the story... So I took the book and started to read Hobbit from the very beginning and what surprised me was the scenes and other descriptions were different from those in the movie... the whole idea doesn't go out of my mind even while realizing all the issues with my free annual credit report .. Embarrassed...

Not on par with the previous ones, but worth the ticket just for the dwarves-centered intro.

The dwarven halls are just spectacular and majestic. 

All I can say is that my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We watched it at home on Blu-Ray. Granted, the mountain giants were a bit much ... though we were able to find for most things in the movie that they correlated to notes, side stories, appendices, and lost tales that Tolkien had written down but were not released until much later both before and after his death.

For those who have not read much of the additional notes, mini-tales, etc that Tolkien wrote to further bring the story of the Hobbit and the surrounding tales together, it can seem like a huge multitude of liberties were taken. In reality, much fewer liberties were granted than those who just may have read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy realize. Many things were stuffed into, around, and between each portion of The Hobbit by Tolkien himself after it was initially written.

We give it 4 out of 5 stars overall and are excited about the second movie as well as the third which will begin to dive into the 60+ years between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

3D will be out of the question when I get to see it... vertigo!  It may be the latest craze but I'll stick to the standard 2D format.

I still haven't seen it, but I definitely want to, even though the LotR trilogy bugged me with all of the changes from the book, I still appreciated the LotR trilogy as films.

Watched it at home with my wife on iTunes this week.

Movies are always a completely different experience to books and this was no exception but I was glad to find it was close enough to not frustrate. It did bring back some childhood memories though.

One criticism though. The section with Radagast fleeing the Orcs on his sleigh was flawed by terrible CGI - made me shudder with its awfulness.

I know what you mean but they had it to rent in HD, our local Blockbusters has gone into administration and we have a sleeping toddler to watch over (so volume set low). We hardly ever have the strength to even watch TV these days. sigh!