Amen! Double Amen! I saw the Hobbit with my two teenage sons last week, and man, were were all three disappointed as hell. This wasn't the charming book I read to them every night when they were 8 and 10. This wasn't the book about a relationships and why being a hero is something that comes from your inner nature and the friends you forge, but rather about how many Orcs you can smash on the way to some great prize. The elements were there, but surrounded by lowest common denominator bloat.
Double amen to your comment too.
In addition to all of your observations: the tone for this movie has been set by Jackson's LotR films. So it has to be this epic action movie, with lots of swordplay and scary brutal monsters, and an overall 'gritty' tone.
So instead of cutesy little goblins being petty and irritating, they get upgraded to savage LotR Orcs. And there was that annoying sub-plot with The Great White Orc chasing the party down because fuck dwarves.
Right! I know! Goblins replaced by dripping, creeping, smelly, dingbat Orcs. Really, it was LOTR part 4. Or Part Zero, I guess, coming before the rest of it.