Well, now you have. The Hobbit is a silly, whimsical, and fun book. The barrels are awesome. I also like the singing and the dwarves giving Bilbo anxiety. My biggest gripe with the movies was that elf who romances a dwarf, I thought that plotline was boring.

I would say my only gripe with the barrel scene is that CGI characters don't age well and the animation seems weird these days but even the LOTR trilogy has many scenes that look bad to my eyes (lighting is weird, characters look too "clean"...)

Can't judge that assessment but often enough I feel that I dislike the hobbit movies even more than most, so maybe we're both not quite the mainstream.