EXCELLENT!!!

Rating: 10/10 (25 January 2002)

GREAT film! I've only read one of the LOTR books (Fellowship) but I can appreciate this movie just as much as a die-hard Tolkien fan can.
What's not to love about this film? It has action(ALOT of action actually), comedy(Merry and Pippin make for great comic relief), romance(Aragorn and Arwen), drama(Gandalf's death, Sam's neverending loyalty to Frodo), and all in all, everything with this film is perfect. The pacing is marvelous as the film is two hours and fifty eight minutes long yet at the end, it feels like an hour and a half went by instead of nearly three hours.
The directing is great, the writing is great, the acting is fantastic, the special effects are great, I mean anything that can be perfect in a film is perfect in LOTR. The translation from book to screen is near perfect. I say near perfect as some things were changed but that does not at all detract from the enjoyment of the film. The film follows the book closely and this is easily one of the best book to film adaptations I've ever seen.
Two thumbs up for LOTR!