My ladyfriend was fortunate enough to get passes to an advance screening of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which we attended last night.
The reviews I've seen so far have been critical of the high-resolution images, claiming it looks too real next to the CGI, and ruins the immersive aspects. Also, some say that stretching a single kids' book out to three films has created a lot of extra nonsense and drawn-out battle scenes.
As a person who read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a teenager more than once (and as an adult too), I enjoyed the film very much. I re-watched the extended versions of all 3 LOTR films in the past week. This movie will make true fans happy, even with the revisions and additions. It's a movie, not a book. It is fun and entertaining. The version I saw was 3D, and it was awesome. Multiple times I was momentarily confused into thinking some sort of flying thing was coming at me. Really neat.
I think the most ironic aspect of the criticism is that the quest in The Hobbit (the dwarves want to reclaim their ancestral home from the dragon that took it) is somehow less worthy than the quest in the LOTR (to stop the most evil being in Middle Earth from returning to dominance). Guys, this is a story about wizards and orcs and magic and shit. It is all frivolous. Lighten up.
However, I do agree that The Hobbit suffers under the comparison to the LOTR films. Hard to beat a masterpiece based on a masterpiece.
