Like watching the last 20 mins of ROTK 7 times in a row with about 50 mins of watchable scenes stuffed in-between!

Rating: Null/10 (24 March 2004)

When are directors going to learn? To have scenes in a film where actors just stare into the camera, at each other, or at nothing, is boring? I thought there was much of it in Return of the King, but believe me, the cast here out-stare the ROTK-cast at a ratio of 10 to 1. To have actors just staring can actually serve a purpose, but it should be used as little as possible, and it should be very explicit what they are trying to communicate. But here, it looks like they just do it for fun. I understand that the director wanted to recreate a time period where you couldn´t just get into a car and drive where you wanted, but had to walk for several hours to get there. But it seems to have slowed down the film as well. I´m not saying that the actors are bad, Renée Zellweger thoroughly deserved her Oscar. Kidman was fair enough, she seemed amateurish in a few of her scenes. But no matter how good the cast is, the director had to include so many shots lingering on trees, birds flying around, farm animals and some hen who was supposed to be the devil, that the boring scenes drowned out the good ones.