I completely agree with you on the spirit of the book thing. I watched it when it first came out and I was blown away by it. I didn’t care about the inaccuracies because the studio did such a good job of capturing the magic of the story.

Oddly enough, the Jackson version had just enough changes in order to make it cinematic that I didn’t really like it the first time through. I’ve come around on that one and can now enjoy it, but for a while it was like the uncanny valley they talk about in robotics.