70's direction and slow pace make this movie miss its mark.

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2002)

For several months now I've waited with great anticipation for the release of "Lord of the Rings", and now I have to say that the previews were the best part.
Yes, I'm one of those people who knows the books backward and forward, but that wasn't what made me want to walk out of this film after the first hour. I actually liked the addition of Arwen (Liv Tyler) as a strong female character. No, what finally made me hate it was poor direction and needless plot changes that detracted from the script and showed a distinct lack of creativity on the part of the screenwriter. What we wanted was the greatest fantasy epic of all time. What we got was "Dragonheart II".
Some characters were changed illogically and beyond almost all recognition. Saruman the White, the greatest of the council of wizards and the wisest for many thousands of years, is depicted here as a petty street fakir ("Now you shall feel pain!"). Elrond's council seemed to have no direction or particular point to it, Moria became a predictable side trip ("But we CANNOT go to Moria, and therefore we MUST go to Moria!"), and the hobbit town of Bree is turned to the human town of Bree for no reason that I could discern. Why is it that Bilbo can wear the ring without any ill effects while Frodo must think he's swimming in ashes? There were so many ill-conceived and gratuitous changes in the storyline that actually created big holes in a previously tight plot. In the end I concluded that Fran Walsh is a famous typist.
Casting and acting were wonderful. But when every one of the actors delivers his lines veeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyy slllllllloooooooooooowwwwly and with great drama, you have to believe Peter Jackson is at fault. Fully 30 minutes of pregnant pauses could have been edited out of the film without touching the dialogue, and a full hour might have been saved for better use had the dialogue been delivered without stentorian drama. I might have liked to see more of Cate Blanchett's wonderful Galadriel or the development of Gimli and Legolas' friendship instead of having to wait through seemingly hours of near-silence.
The mark of good special effects and computer animation lies in their subtlety. This movie's CGI certainly doesn't fit that bill. Whoever did the post-production went positively hog wild with them, adding them in at every opportunity to the grave detriment of much of the film.
Cinematography was mediocre. Camera angles for real scenery and CGI shots alike were uncreative, static and managed to make great things look unassuming. Some of it was just plain mistaken, such as the close-up shots on Gandalf's beard that revealed the snow to be...something else. Direction and cinematography have come a long way in the last thirty years, but you couldn't tell that from this film.
Summary: Casting - Wonderful, Acting - Great, especially considering the circumstances, Direction - Amateurish and clumsy, Cinematography - Mediocre, Script - Mediocre, Overall - Mediocre
"Lord of the Rings" is a disappointing loose adaptation of a wonderful book, even for those who haven't read it.