Tolkien's Frodo being an active protagonist, not passive luggage, both the script and the casting of Wood took away another of Frodo's defining characteristics: he was older and wiser than the other hobbits, indeed remarkably wise for any hobbit (and better-educated than any save Bilbo).

We can go round and round about hobbit maturation rates and what they really looked like at thirty-three; but apparent age notwithstanding Frodo was really fifty and had fifty years of life experience. The script made him a naif, and casting a teenager then completely buried book-Frodo's maturity.

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Yes, in book-canon Frodo was fifty years old when he left the Shire with the Ring. On the other hand, Bilbo's farewell party also celebrated Frodo's thirty-third birthday and his coming of age. So, in the films Frodo is probably aged no more than thirty-four when he and Sam set out for Rivendell. By Hobbit standards he really was still a young adult, equivalent to one of the Big Folk in their early twenties.

Yes, that's the "going round and round" bit I alluded to, an old argument as hoary as Balrog wings. It starts with a given datum: that once Frodo received the ring on his 33rd birthday he stopped physically aging.

Bilbo's parting birthday gifts to the Gaffer, who was 75 at the time, included ointment for creaking joints, which to my mind also argues for aging at essentially a human rate.

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That's not convincing. A hard-working hobbit gardener by his seventy-fifth year could very well have developed a condition such as either rheumatism or arthritis. You would have done better to cite young Meriadoc Brandybuck who seemed quite mature for his age of not yet twenty years in T.A. 3001. Pippin at that time couldn't have been more than eleven years old (though the films bumped both of their ages up for Bilbo's party).

...many people suffer from rheumatoid arthritis at 53?

"No one had a more attentive audience than old Ham Gamgee, commonly known as the Gaffer...he had tended the garden at Bag End for forty years...Now that he was himself growing old and stiff in the joints, the job was mainly carried on by his youngest son, Sam Gamgee"

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Even if it's uncommon, that doesn't make it impossible or even unreasonable, especially for someone who makes his living with his hands. Besides, I'm not saying that the analogy works 100% across the board. Generally speaking, I do continue to believe that the Hobbit life cycle is notably slower than that of the common Man. I think we should be able to see this evidenced in Bree where Hobbits and the Big Folk coexist.

''Not every story is, or should be, a Bildungsroman. There are other forms of narrative out there. Some of them are even stronger than the Bildungsroman convention, in terms of dramatic power. (Such as, to name only one, the mature individual suddenly forced to confront challenges to their beliefs, or overwhelming odds, or even both at once, as when overwhelming odds destroy apparently-justified faith in one's own competence. I seem to recall something of the sort in those static old flops, King Lear and Oedipus Rex: obviously J/B/W can do better than Shakespeare and Sophocles at storytelling.) The story of a young man growing up is only one of many, many possible human (or other) experiences; it is not the only possible story, and it is really a story that requires a focus on one character, introspectively, where events are only important as they impact the focal character, over a fairly protracted length of time — not multiple characters in an event-driven plot which mostly takes place in a quite brief amount of time. Trying to force an "arc" (with "arc" defined in a very simplistic manner) on each and every character results in implausible personalities, bizarre behavior, and irrational plots''.