In the novel, of course, Bilbo saves the dwarves many times—not only through his cleverness and his magic ring, but through his greater nerve. In Jackson's story, though, the dwarves are utterly fearless and possessed of sufficient battle prowess that Bilbo's cleverness, or lack thereof, is largely beside the point.

Completely ignores the fact that all of the times Bilbo saves the dwarves come later in the story than the first movie reached. Other than that it's a decent article. Slightly misses the point, perhaps.

I am an avid Lord of the Rings fan; in fact I just spent about 30 dollars on nice copies of History of Middle Earth volumes 7-9 today. I loved Jackson's film. Going in, I thought it would be nigh impossible for Jackson to fit the silliness of The Hobbit into the gritty realism of his previous trilogy. (Tolkien regretted, later, the extent to which The Hobbit approaches ridiculousness at times.) But Jackson killed it. There are a few slapdash-style scenes (the article mentioned the goblin chase), but those are outweighed by scenes of a gravity never actually approached in the first half of Tolkien's book (Thorin's song, the White Council). If anything, Jackson lent The Hobbit a gravitas badly needed (for a film adaptation), and I think Tolkien would have appreciated that.