The Phantom Menace all over again

Rating: 9/10 (27 December 2001)

Lord of the Rings follows in the footsteps of George Lucas' epic flop:
1) Bad dialogue: the characters spend a great portion of the 3 hrs. explaining the world of the novels to the audience, almost as if the script were taking lines straight out from the novel.
2) Cinematic cliches: the pounding footsteps a la Jurassic Park announce the arrival of the next big bad guy, those irritating JOLT!! scenes where enemies pop out of nowhere into the camera, comrades that take 15 minutes to pass away (but not before they have a chance to say goodbye), and many more than can be mentioned here...
3) The Hero's Journey: haven't people gotten tired of this formula yet?
4) Special FX overkill: long stretches of the aforementioned bad dialogue are interspersed with lavish, computer generated worlds. Its very pretty, but its all been done before by Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic a million times. Well, at least no Jar Jar Binks equivalent in LOTR.
This film has shot up to the vaunted #1 spot on the IMdB's 250 of all time, proving that hype really does work wonders, even if people have been duped before by Lucas' box office buster "The Phantom Menace" (which itself eventually exited from the top 250). Naturally, Lord of the Rings will not only blow away the box offices, but also the Oscars. Expect another "Titanic" showing at the Academy Awards.
Best film of all time? Hmmm. Give it a couple of months. Don't expect LOTR to hold the top spot for too long.