Lord of the Rings' granddaddy

Rating: Null/10 (2 March 2004)

There are many parallels between Ben-Hur and Lord of the Rings (let's take "Return of the King", for the sake of the argument). The obvious one is that they're both ridiculously long. I mean, wouldn't you rather watch 30 less minutes of Charlton Heston's over-the-top theatrics? Even then Ben-Hur would top 3 hours and be considered an overly long epic.
Another thing is that both flicks won 11 Oscars and I'm pretty sure neither deserved that many. I mean, Heston won an Academy Award for THAT? And LOTR's clean sweep obviously happened because the first two were not taken seriously enough by the Academy. I didn't see how "Return of the King" was better (or worse, for that matter) than the first two. Perhaps there's a rule that every movie over 3 hours has to win Best Picture and a bucketload of other Oscars- see also Titanic, Schindler's List, Dances With Wolves, Gandhi... I'm sure there are many many more. OK, that's enough ranting for now. Apart from the always unintentionally funny Heston, the performances are good. I especially liked Stephen Boyd as Messala. The chariot race sequence was fantastic and the ending would appeal to every Christian on the face of the Earth. As an Atheist, I just found it chuckle-worthy. In a nutshell, if you have nothing to do for a whole day and don't mind Charlton Heston, you see this. It's pretty good although a little overpraised.