Has anybody seen either of the Hobbit movies in this new HFR (high frame rate) format?  Was it as distracting as people say?  It looks like I've got a choice between 3D and 3D HFR in my local cinema (no 2D, sadly) and am debating which to spring for.

Will have some comments on the movie itself I imagine in a day or two once I've seen it.

if you've ever watched TV with the higher refresh rate turned on, you'll get that "Soap Opera Effect" they call it, where it seems like stuff is shot on handicam.  It's a bit jarring at first if you're not used to it.  about halfway through the first movie you forget it's there, at least that's how I found it.  I saw a screening of the 2nd movie so I didn't go see it in HFR. I probably won't bother. 

If you want a new experience, try it out.  If you're a stickler like some for the regular film effect, you may want to just take the safe road and not go the HFR route.

I prefer 3D in HFR and 2D in 24hz. I just don't like stuttering in 3D.

James O has the right of it.  I saw both films in both formats, and while I realized the merit of HFR in places (CGI motion is more impressive, and natural elements like water and fire pop off the screen), I much prefer the overall filmic qualities of 24fps.  For lack of a better description, there just seems to be a more tangible sense of 'heft' when watching in 24.

It's worth mentioning that, while I almost never get sick from viewing movies in 3D, the opening sequence of "An Unexpected Journey" (where they're panning and zooming through the Dwarven kingdom of Erebor) gave me some serious vertigo when viewing in 48fps.  Wasn't exactly the ideal sequence to showcase when trying to ease newcomers into the new format.

I wound up seeing a matinee showing in 2D.  Which is just as well, as I would have felt bad about paying over $10 for such a ho-hum effort.  My review ditty:

More driven than the meandering first episode, but still hampered by uneven pacing and far too much plot, much of which still feels inconsequential two films in. As in the first film, the abundant action too often looks like a video game – not so much in the special effects as in the ridiculous actions characters are performing onscreen. (One scene in particular has them going from Chun-Li-stomping on heads to Mario-hopping into barrels in the span of a couple minutes.)

The dragon Smaug is impressive, as are the cavernous underground vistas (enough almost to make me wish I’d seen it in 3D). And the ending does set the stage for a climactic conclusion. Whether Jackson can provide that in the third and final film without dragging it down with extraneous exposition remains to be seen. Judging by these first two installments I’m guessing not.

3 stars