Many people knew it would look like a daytime soap the minute the 48fps news came out, so I'm not surprised at this at all.
It's a shame a filmmaker of Jackson's caliber has fallen for the Cameron-ization of film trend, which is more focused on making tech demos than good films.
I'm late to the thread and this has probably already been pointed out, but the main reason it looks soapish is because they've moved from film to digital. It's not the frame rate. Look at Avatar it has that same look, but because it's the first movie in a franchise and in a sci-fi setting, that digital look matched the movie. With the Hobbit the reduction in palatte quality jumps out because we're used to looking at the Lord of the Rings on film. We have a particular look already in our mind's eye.
It seems to be an on going misconception, there are actually three major technology changes happening here. The first is the jump to digital, the second is the jump to 3D and the 3rd is of course the jump to 48FPS. None of these reviews seem to be taking a step back and realising the comparison they're making is with the Lord of the Rings and they need to take all of these changes into account. One very big reason Nolan went 2D Imax for the new Batman movie rather than 48FPS 3D was to keep the look of the trilogy consistent. I'm a huge fan of 3D and can't wait to see The Hobbit at 48FPS, but I think that look digital technology imbues in the picture is going to be the greatest issue. The big fear I have is people confusing it with 48FPS.
Just quietly, I wish Nolan had filmed Batman on film and at 48FPS 2D over Imax. An argument for another thread though.
At present 24FPS film still looks better than 24FPS digital and it probably always will even with digitals increasing resolution. That is except for the major advantage in fast moving scenes digital can jump up in frame rate and get rid of all the nasty blur and judder effects that cripple a hi resolution format like Imax.