Good, but not great

Rating: 7/10 (4 January 2002)

Okay, let's start by saying I'm not going to comment on how well or badly the movie followed the book. I never liked comparing films to the medium they came from, just judge them on their own merit. So with that in mind, LOTR-TFOTR is okay, not great by any stretch. It's basically a 3-hour chase and fight scene movie, with a few moments of character development thrown in here and there. And at 3-hours of running and fighting, that gets to be too long. I'm not against long movies if their stories warrant it, but this doesn't. After watching it I left thinking, "okay, just how much did I learn about these characters?" Not a lot, really. Do I care if Frodo succeeds in his quest? Am I interested in the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen? And what about the other two hobbits that were captured? And Gandalf? I'd have to say that my answer would be no. This film didn't keep me interested in the characters (except for Gandalf, maybe) enough for me to wonder what's going to happen to them. What keeps this movie moving are the characters running from one menace to another. And after what seems to be the twentieth fight scene, you almost wish they'd get killed and be over with it. I've read other reviews that mention this is the first of three books so you have to forgo any character development and get the story moving. This is completely wrong. If you don't care about the characters in the first movie, why bother to see what happens to them in the next? Are we supposed to resign ourselves to the fact that this is a trilogy and we have to see all three to fully appreciate them? No. This is a movie, and it should be judged the same as any other. There are trilogies that the first installment stands on it's own, with or without the others. Ever hear of The Godfather?. And if the answer is, well, it's true to the book and that's the way the book is, I would answer then that's the fault of the book. I know this not to be true. The book is full of character development that Peter Jackson forgo for action. And as for the special effects, I didn't think they were that great. In today's age where you can film a shot in your basement and make it look like you're on top of Mount Everest, spectacular effects are too much common-place. And honestly, some of the scenes had the obvious look of computer-generation to them. No matter how good the special effects are, your eye can still detect something's wrong. No I didn't hate the film as you might think. It was entertaining in some areas. I think the look of some of the different lands in Middle Earth had a nice feel to them. I just don't think it was that great of a movie.