Three Times The Hobbit?

[Inziladun]

This is to me the most interesting:

This film is so stuffed with extraneous faff and flummery that it often barely feels like Tolkien at all – more a dire, fan-written internet tribute. The book begins with the unimprovable ten-word opening sentence: “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.” Jackson, by contrast, starts with an interminable narrative detour about a mining operation run by a team of dwarfs, involving magic crystals, orc armies and details of dwarf family trees that are of interest, at this early stage in what is supposed to be a family film, to almost nobody.

The first sentence could well apply to Jackson's previous efforts at Tolkien.

As for the rest, it's pretty much what we "unjust" critics here have been ruminating about for some time.
At any rate, I may end up seeing it despite my misgivings. I am matched against a power too great for me (my wife), who has said she wants to go.