as good as you'd expect

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2002)

So, cutting through all the hype, and considering it as both a book adaptation and a film its its own right, has the Fellowship come up to scratch.
Seeing lots of trailers and posters for this through the last half of the year, my first reaction was 'hmm, looks good'. I've always counted the trilogy LOTR as my favourite book(s) and so I couldn't possibly miss this film adaptation.
Casting: I had reservations about Elijah Wood - for one thing, he's too young. Frodo was in his fiftieth year before he even went on the quest. *But* having said that Wood does convey some of the feeling that a small half-size hobbit would probably feel in dangerous surroundings - he acts a lot with his eyes and by the end of the film you are really interested in this little creature and his destiny. Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee as the old wizards were perfect - I really couldn't imagine better casting and if Sean Connery really was ever in the running as Gandalf then the producers must have been mad. Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean as the mortals - I always had a bit of a thing for Aragorn and this version is just fine; and Bean's portrayal of Boromir by the end of the film (actually an event from The Two Towers) works very well. The other hobbits and the elves are not drawn as well, perhaps this will be rectified in later films. But John Rhys-Davies's Gimli is just as you would imagine a dwarf to be in the pages of Tolkien. And the girls (Arwen - Liv Tyler, Galadriel - Cate Blanchett) are a bit more than the token decoration they were in the original book. Ian Holm is an acceptable Bilbo - again I had some doubt about his casting but I needn't have worried.
Script - is fairly strong and moves along well. The only sticking point was 'let's go hunt some orc' but you can forgive a tiny lapse. Most of it is poetic, compelling, etc etc. All the major clichés when you really can't fault something.
Camera-work and FX - exceptional. That sweep over little villages, the battle scenes (the opening battle even better than the fire throwers in Gladiator), the colour and the sense of the piece. I couldn't fault the Shire, Rivendell, the dark mines, or any of the rest of it.
In conclusion, this lives up to the hype and more. It misses the humour of the opening chapters of Fellowship in part, but this is a small quibble indeed for such a great movie which could eat Harry Potter for breakfast. Go and see it. I can't praise it any higher than that.