I didn't expect The Hobbit would be a non-stop cheesy literal cliffhanger.

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2013)

An unexpected journey, indeed.
If you expected The Hobbit would turn to be a great movie, you may want to expect the unexpected.
I mean, yes, the title character is masterfully performed by Martin Freeman; Gandalf, Galadriel and the beautiful landscapes are as enjoyable as ever, but that's about it. Oh yeah, there are a few scenic sunsets, too. What's left of the movie(like, the movie itself?!) suffers.
At the root of all this movie's evils is... greed. To near-sighted executives, three movies mean thrice the profit. You can do that with Lord of the Rings, which has three books rich with story and detail. But turning the simpler, younger-audience-oriented story of The Hobbit into three movies is simply overkill. And it shows. The director desperately tries to find more content to fit into the movie. Thus he puts in the movie aspects of the Middle Earth universe not covered in the book. He gives extended screen time to insignificant events, and he shamelessly bloats the movie with long, drawn-out fighting scenes, obnoxiously peppered with ridiculously cheap thrills.
There is that "cliffhanger" expression, but here it's obnoxiously literal. The whole movie is a non-stop race of literal cliffhanger moments. To give just an example, imagine a character hanging over a precipice, after having grabbed at the last possible moment, while falling, from another character that hangs himself from Gandalf's staff, that was stretched at the last possible moment towards him, to save him from a deadly fall; Gandalf himself grabbing the branch of a tree that itself hangs horizontally over the precipice, gradually uprooting itself, nestling the other members of Bilbo's party, that hang for dear life after managing to save themselves in that last standing three, which was itself knocked over in a domino effect by a series of falling trees on a thin stretch of land hanging over a precipice, where the warg-riding goblins cornered them, eventually, after a drawn-out chasing and fighting scene. Oh yes and when they all eventually fall from that tree, guess what, the giant eagles appear and catch them, at the last possible moment. That's an actual scene that pretty much sums up the whole movie, in all it's revolting obnoxious abuse of cheesy thrills.
So if you think you can withstand such a revolting insult to your intelligence, then, by all means, go see the movie, there's Bilbo in it, and Gandalf, and Galadriel and beautiful landscapes. Oh yeah, and scenic sunsets.