Way too long, indulgent and fairly boring honestly. Jackson stretches a thin simple story into a “saga” of “epic proportions” that falls flat except for the performance of Martin Freeman as Bilbo the Hobbit. The last 20 minutes work well too with the fantastic Gollum and the flight scenes leading up to the dragon. The 3-D is not used with great effect here and as for the whole 48 FPS thing…well it made it look like an odd cross between a daytime soap opera and a video game. I am not looking forward to another 6 hours of this stuff, but my 9 year old liked it (mostly) so I’m sure I’ll see the other two.