Many of the scenes felt disconnected, like it was a collage of separate pieces of video footage. Although this is necessary to understand the background and history of Middle Earth and how it all connects in the end, throughout much of the first half it felt like the story jumped around too much. It made it seem like the movie was an attempt to extend a short plot line with filler background scenes.
This leads me to my next point that I find it disappointing that the movie was split into three parts. Even though it ended with a conclusion to a minor internal conflict, it leaves more untied ends than it fulfills. If I were to tell you the setup to a joke, but not follow through with the punch line, you probably would've wished that I never even started in the first place. I hope that this "break the movie into parts" trend that started with Harry Potter doesn't become a thing. I would rather sit through a six hour movie that concludes a storyline than watch three two-hour movies years apart.
Lastly, the movie became repetitive. The basic plot tool was that they were stuck in some seemingly impossible-to-escape scenario, only to be saved by some outside unexpected force. It is an excellent way to construct a story, especially in a movie, but after a few times it became predictable.
Despite all of this, the movie was constructed and animated very well. In particular, the movements and facial expressions of Gollum were extremely realistic, and helped communicate so much about his character. (The one scene that looked extremely fake was when the bridge was falling in the underground goblin lair. The animation was not clean and it looked embarrassingly awful. Most people probably didn't notice though.)
Overall, I would recommend not seeing the Hobbit, but rather wait for all of the movies to come out. Then take an afternoon off, and watch all of the parts in a row. It is a movie worth seeing, but in its current state - it loses much of its potential.
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