The worst thing about reading books before movies are adapted to them is inevitably feeling the movie is not as good. That said, I think the film would have stood on its own merits had it followed the book. I can understand taking stuff out, but adding things in was where it really lost me. In some ways it seems like he was ticking off to-dos from a focus-group type list: romance - check; dwarf jokes - check; vast cgi legions of things - check; etc.
I just don't understand why he strayed from the template he created with LOTR:FOTR.. It was a great movie and while the merits of leaving out Tom Bombadil are still under debate, it was well made, focused, and pacing was good. The Hobbit though, it dragged on and on. It is only a 300 page book; less than half of any of the LOTR books. You could literally read "The Hobbit" in the time it took to watch the movies.
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