About as anticlimactic as I expected...

Rating: 6/10 (10 April 2013)

...and if it weren't for the top-rank design and effects, I'd have likely never gotten through it. As it is, it took me three days. Of course, I never could manage to finish the book in the first place, more than forty years ago, so that may have something to do with my lack of enchantment. What struck me is that the whole thing is "The Lord of the Rings" redux. Look, it's another quest! Look, it's got a bunch of the same characters, and we know nothing bad will happen to any of them because then they couldn't show up in "The Lord of the Rings." Look, here's another action sequence straight from a video game! Yawn.
Strictly for Tolkien fans, and apparently a good number of them are disgruntled by the additions/subtractions that Jackson & Co. have effected. The uninitiated likely won't care, but will still be daunted by this film's bloated running time. Trust me, you're really not missing a whole lot beyond eye candy. This isn't a bad film; far from it. It's just...unnecessary.
12/16/13 edit: Got the chance to see the extended version in 3D BluRay recently. My comments stand, plus an observation that the extra sequences add nothing special. Part II has just opened to the expected "holidaze" success, and I'm betting it's more of the same: dispensable entertainment, in one eye and out the other.