I have to say that I think the serious assesment of Tolkien's work is beginning. It is limited, though. I would cite Verlyn Flieger's two books, Splintered Light, & A Question of Time, & Tom Shippey's Road to Middle Earth & Author of the Century. There are also a couple of collections, Tolkien's Legendarium, & JRR Tolkien & his Literary Resonances, which treat the subject in a very serious (though far from boring) way. But let's face it, there are also, some very poor, trivial, works on Tolkien out there (Finding God in LotR, for example - I don't argue with the author's actually finding God, or anything else, in LotR, but that book for one is just trivial).
It seems to me that a real assesment of Tolkien cannot take place until the literary world has managed to take in the posthumous writings, HOME, letters, etc. The problem there, though, is that the literary establishment has to be willing to undertake that reasessment, which will probably take a while. Whether the movies will help is another question, as they seem to have gone out of their way to present LotR as a 'Dungeons & Dragon's' tale, & probably reinforce the 'establishment's view of the book.
It is, of course, possible for a work's deepest, most profound levels to be completely missed by the overwhelming majority, who never see them, as they simply refuse to believe they exist. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
At the same time, there are serious journals, like Mythlore & Mallorn, produced by the Mythopoeic Society & the Tolkien Society, which regularly produce serious work. I don't think the situation is entirely hopeless.
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