Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I thought HFR dramatically improved the Hobbit films. The first 5 minutes of each movie felt very odd, as if everyone was moving in fast motion without actually moving any faster (sorry, that's the best way I can describe it), but after those first 5 minutes, the movie looked completely natural and amazing. Especially the 3D, it looked so good that I want every single 3D movie to be produced in HFR now, and I lament the fact that there's no way to get HFR at home.
As for feeling like a play, I guess I didn't pay attention to the background characters much because I never noticed any of this nonsense mumbling that you're talking about.
Most modern TVs tend to have motion smoothing available as an option as well (that page says higher-end TVs but I've seen it on plenty of cheaper TVs as well, though I don't know when that was written). But it's nowhere near as good as HFR, especially in scenes with a lot of motion it tends to make things blurrier.
It depends on a person. For me, the weird effect you had for the first 5 minutes never subsided, and I disliked it all the way till the very end. I felt like it should be out of sync with sound, because everyone moved in such an unnatural way,but it never was, no matter how hard I looked.
BUilding on this, I saw the Hobbit the first time in 48, and the second time in 24fps.
The panning around at the beginning of the movie was HORRIBLE in 24fps. Visually displeasing. The HFR effect disappeared for me after a few minutes and I could enjoy the film for what it was.
As for feeling like a play, I guess I didn't pay attention to the background characters much because I never noticed any of this nonsense mumbling that you're talking about.