No patience? Stay home then!!

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2001)

Although there are a zillion of reviews out there, I've been inspired enough by this film to not only register for this site, but write my own review as well. This is easily the best film I've watched when it comes to large-scale visual effects since titanic. Kudos to Jackson for having such a beautiful vision and re-creating it on the screen so that we could all share it. I've read the trilogy several times and was very impressed w/ his ability to bring the orcs, cavetrolls, and even the vaguely described (in the book) balrog and ringwraiths to life. What really makes this work is the cast. As everyone else has already praised Ian and Viggo for Gandalf and Aragorn, I'd like to direct a little of this praise towards Orlando Bloom for his first major picture role- Legolas. He slipped into the role with both elegance and direction (of course the pretty face didn't hurt. :P The only one in the cast that was slightly disappointing was Sean Astin as Sam. Somehow, he just doesn't fit the picture. Plus his accent seemed to vary a bit throughout the movie.
Lastly, I'd like to briefly respond to the following criticisms of the film. It's too long??? Already certain important scenes have been cut just to bring this movie to it's current length. That jackson was able to compress 500 pages into 3 hours is already impressive. Complaints were also filed about certain characters missing - such as Bombadil, Glorfindel, and that other wizard. With such a large main cast already, it is perfectly understandable to delete certain parts that do not play an integral part in the plot. Either way, ppl will complain about either the extended length (if more characters are added), or if they are missing, so i think jackson made a fitting choice. And sure, the movie doesn't follow the book's timeline, but do you REALLY want to see viggo mortensen dressed/made up to look like a 50 year old man??
So basically if you haven't seen the movie yet, give it a try. And keep in mind that 3 hours can fly by quickly if you keep your mind open and realize that this movie was made based on SOMEONE's (not YOUR) imagination, so there will be differences. If you are such a stickler for detail, stay home and reread the book.