Best I Am Totally Pro-Hobbit

Well aware of its surprisingly mixed reviews and feeling uneasy of this splitting of the book into three movies, I went to the Hobbit Saturday morning in an unenthused mood.  But guess what?  I totally thought it was great.  Let me break down my Hobbit thoughts as bullet points:

• I like the Bilbo/Frodo framing device.  It makes the movie cozy.  
• Martin Freeman is so perfectly cast as young Bilbo and young Bilbo is such a perfect Hobbit.  A personality mingling Samwise with Merry and Pippen and hardly a drop of prissy Frodo.
• I think LoTR enthusiasts that complain about this movie's runtime and the expansion of the book into something that will run nearly 9 hours just love to hear themselves opine.  I was worried about the length, I already said that, but if you had told me the movie was only an hour and a half I would have believed you and every embellishment—the backstory on the dwarves, the backstory on Moria, the meeting with Saruman—worked for me.  If, in the end, we have bloated, lousy movies then we've got something to complain about.  But as long as we've got great adventure-filled adventures, what's the problem?
• Now I haven't read the Hobbit for a long while, so I'm not positive what was made up for or added to the story, but there were things that the movie helped me understand about the tale better than before.  Like why Gandalf wanted to help the dwarves and get rid of Smaug.  That's the main thing.
• When Gandalf was having that meeting with Saruman, was Saruman already bad?  That's my number one question from the movie.
• The Brown wizard was goofy, sure, but I liked his rabbits.  And I liked that he said "Ungoliant" for spider-monster.  And that he was as confident in his rabbits' speed as Han Solo was of the Millenium Falcon's.
• I liked how the boss of the Goblins talked like a sophisticate.  Relatively.  You can really see how he got to be in charge of the goblins.
• At the very end, when they can see the Lonely Mountain in the distance, and they're like "Well, looks like the hard part's behind us" . . . they do realize they still have to kill a dragon, right?
• . . . or the Dwarves all think Gandalf is going to do that?  And that it's not going to be any problem for him?  Is that the plan.
• I like how it ended just like Breaking Dawn pt. 1
• I saw the movie in normal old 2D.  And not even in stadium seating.  But I plan strongly to see it High Frame Rate 3D over Christmas weekend.  To get the full on experience.

In short, I liked the Lord of the Rings movies, but if you think of your friend that likes those movies the most of all your friends . . . well, I don't like them as much as he does.  But the Hobbit was grand and Pt. 2 cannot come quickly enough!  I'm glad Pt. 3 isn't going to be a full year after Hobbit 2.  That's good planning.