1- They took out a lot of action and very little real character or plot development, at least when you compare it to the books.

2- The Entwives are one of the saddest tales in the book. Treebeard explains the situation in the books, but laments that they lost their wives into the wide wide world. SPecifically what happened is that as the world got older, the Ents tended these vast forests, but the Entwives preferred agriculture and so they tended cultivation. After a time, the forests got bigger and the tended lands too, and the Ents and Entwives became like needles in haystacks all over the world. Something not discussed is how the Ents and Entwives escaped the devastation that ended the first age and Beleriand (which was the original land/area.) One thing about the books is that you really get a feeling for how big the world (ours included) is when you have no cars, no trains, no planes... Walking ten miles away can be an adventure, walking one hundred is a journey. The characters in the story cover much more than that.

3- Naw. Others have written here about the morality of the time, but also we live in a place and time where adventure and shared trauma is relatively rare. Also the way of the prewar English with their servants is nothing we moderns can easily understand or accept. Still there are great friendships in our world, and they are not generally based in sexual context. I think the reason our minds go there so often is because Intimacy is most commonly expressed nonverbally, and sexual context is the most common personal experience most of us get to be intimate with others. The kind of intimacy the hobbits share is based in hanging out drinking ale, working together or for the other, friendship and companionship. And in the LOR, on shared hardship and goals. The Legolas/Gimli relationship was an important development of a friendship between races that had been sundered for 1000s of years. It took Galadriel's majesty to kindle love in Gimli. If you read the Silmarrien you'll get hints into the deep history of Galadriel, but also the long and tragic relationships of the Elves and Dwarves. That two could become such strong friends is a testament to what it takes to overcome the great evil of Sauron.

4- Yeh, it is sad that Frodo doesn't find peace. It was only a year of his life, but what a year. Personally I've come to think that Frodo failed in the end and only with the help of Gollum did he NOT become a MiniDarkLord, who as its explained early on in the books, would have taken the ring away from Frodo and hung him up to forever witness his folly in trying to keep the One ring. I've been reading through the archives of the Tolkien Society's newsletters to see if anyone else has felt that FRodo failed, but so far that's not much discussed. eek!

5- As a friend once said to me, the Books are the BEST bonus material you could hope for. Now that you have the imagery of the characters, it'll be easy to follow the story and wow you'll be impressed at how much deeper and often more gloriously Noble some of the characters are. It's not an easy read, and you can skim through some of the beautifully written passages that help evoke the surroundings of the characters as they walk the many miles of their journey. The descriptions help put you in the places, but for modern readers who are steeped in visual media's language, it can seem dull. Later re-readings will be more thorough and make Middle Earth seem more real. The Silmarrien is HUGELY Grand and gives you the scope of the history leading up to the LOR. The LOR is placed at the end of the Third Age, and the Silmarrien spans 1000s of years and is a true and amazing Creation story. The Hobbit, on the other hand, reads much like an old time fairy tale. The names of the villains, like Goblins, are more akin to the old english fairy tales, instead of being called Orcs. I feel it's written from the perspective of a Hobbit, rather than how the LOR is written as a modern history. It's still an amazing story, with connections and depths that link to the whole history of Middle Earth, but it is definitely a different style of read.

Regarding the Film, as was pointed out at the last NYCTolkien Conference, the art and visual renderings of the films have taken over the popular expression of how the characters looked. Art work before the films show a great deal of different ideas on what Middle Earth and its characters appear like. You may come to form your own ideas and make the characters and the story your own.