Great as long as your view isn't too narrow.

Rating: 10/10 (12 February 2014)

Very very minor spoilers ahead.
I just don't understand the complaints about the movie, especially not about Bilbo not being the main character.
These books have many many layers, that what makes them so great, and I feel that this complaint is a failure to look at all of them.
The hobbit is a children's book, we can talk about how the story is about Bilbo finding out that there is more about him than he thinks, and I'd agree, that is an important part of the story, it's what gives it depth. Both LotR and the hobbit use a simple premise (throw ring in volcano, slay dragon) that becomes great because the simple premise allows you extra time to build up the elements surrounding the premise, there is more emphasis on the characters and their journey. This layer of the story is more for the adult readers though I think, and works subconsciously on younger readers.
The more straightforward appeal of the Hobbit however are the adventures of Bilbo. The dragon is just an excuse to get Bilbo started on his journey, what matters is all the wonderful places he visits, he goes from one to another and each is nice and short and separate and great as a chapter for a child.
But when you look at it from a more grown up perspective Lotr and The Hobbit aren't really about hobbits, as much as people seem to think they are. They are about the Hobbit getting involved into this greater world, with heroes and wizards and elves and dwarfs, the world is the real main character, Bilbo is just our avatar in experiencing it, an outsider getting thrown into adventure.
Because LotR is a more mature book, it takes its time to develop each and every one of these layers to its full potential, but in the Hobbit they are more subdued. This leads to things like 13 dwarfs without any distinct characters. The only thing that is really an overarching story in the Hobbit is Bilbos growth. You can argue that this should have been the same way in the movies but I disagree.
I hear people constantly say that this or that scene wasn't necessary, and I hear others say that the same scene should be longer (like the spiders). But you can't just get rid of set pieces in the hobbit without losing an important layer of the hobbit, the layer that is about visiting places and having random adventures.
But if they are just random adventures people complain about scenes being useless. If dwarfs have no character then people complain that they are useless. Everyone has their own layer of the stories of middle earth that they love and everyone seems to be complaining that their layer is not the one that all the focus is on during the hobbit, many of the complaints seem to stem from in inability to appreciate those parts of the layering. Some want a simple adventure, some want a huge epic, personally I wanted 3 movies from the start, because I felt that the Hobbit needed it.
Peter decided he needed more characterization, and a more coherent story, not just a mish mash of places. To do this he put more emphasis on the 13 dwarfs, and their habits and stories, furthermore he used the narrative of the ring to tie the tale together with the overarching world.
Gandalfs tale about the necromancer is barely mentioned in the hobbit, because it is from the point of view of Bilbo, that is why everything revolves around him, but Peter decided to show gandalfs tale to us, I appreciate this because it strengthens the idea that this is a world filled with heroes and stories, and not just the tale of Bilbo Baggins, but at the same time I can see the story from Bilbo's side, oblivious to these larger tales. I think it is great to see how Bilbo really only plays a small part in a greater story, and I enjoy it even more knowing that that small part will eventually be the rock that starts an avalanche. The trick is being able to separate the two while viewing it. Bilbo is the hero in his own adventure, his own mind, this is one layer, but middle earth isn't that simple.
The movies spends time on the dwarfs, the necromancer, the greater tale, it weaves everything together, and if you stand back and look at it like this,the movie is great, the only real problems I have with it is that there is to much CGI where there should be practical effects, and they pull you out of the movie, things like the barrel scene were ridiculous, and the same thing goes for the far to lengthy and CGI heavy scene with Smaug and the dwarfs.
I don't feel like Bilbo's tale was lessened just because other tales also got the spotlight. We can clearly see Bilbos growth in not just his actions but his attitudes. The movie starts with them relying on him, he spies on Beorn, he saves them from the spiders, he saves them from mirkwood, he confronts Smaug and gets the arkenstone, he discovers the weak spot (although it should have been due to his cunning).
I can appreciate these things without being annoyed by the fact that the entire world doesn't revolve around him. I don't understand why others can't.