"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey": Reviews are in

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is now out in theaters and critics' reviews are mixed on Peter Jackson's action-adventure.

The film, which is the first of "The Hobbit" trilogy, follows Bilbo Baggins' (Martin Freeman) journey to the Lonley Mountain to reclaim the treasure that was stolen from him by the dragon Smaug.

• "The Hobbit": Peter Jackson talks Ian McKellen and the next two films
• Andy Serkis: The actor inside a character's skin

In addition to Freeman, "The Hobbit" stars Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis.

"The Hobbit" received a 69 percent on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Here's what critics are saying about the film:

Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone: "Part One of director Peter Jackson's planned film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit forces audiences to run an obstacle course before the fun kicks in."

Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle: "If you loved the earlier films, these are moments you will hold on to, but they're very few, and they're not enough."

Joe Morgenstern of Wall Street Journal :"An overlong adventure enlivened by wonders."

A.O. Scott of New York Times: "Tolkien's inventive, episodic tale of a modest homebody on a dangerous journey has been turned into an overscale and plodding spectacle."

Michael Phillips of The Chicago Tribune: "Extracting three generously proportioned films from Tolkien's books made sense. But turning the relatively slim 1937 volume "The Hobbit" into a trilogy, peddling seven or eight hours of cine-mythology, suggests a better deal for the producers than for audiences."

Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times: 'From an artistic point of view, star Mary Pickford famously said, "It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talking instead of the other way around.' Likewise, it would have been better all around if Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' films had not come before his new, three-part version of 'The Hobbit.'"