Unpopular opinion! You have been warned!

Rating: 4/10 (20 April 2016)

Let's get one thing out of the way: I haven't read the books (which is not to say I don't read!!), so I am dealing purely with the film as its own entity.
Would you believe that I didn't see this until I was 21? I watched it with both my parents, and we were astounded by how much we thought it sucked. It surprised me how run-of-the-mill the plot is and how much in common it has with Harry Potter. We agreed that J. K. Rowling used the same elements better, and I don't even consider myself a Potter fan! I guess I was so exposed to the tropes LOTR popularized that they already bored me. That shouldn't happen. In particular, Frodo is one of the lamest, most unbearable protagonists I've come across on film. You can pull off protagonists who are timid and unable to do much for themselves, such as Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, but Frodo doesn't jell. I'm not saying this just to be contrarian; this is how I seriously felt. For comparison, I liked the Star Wars franchise as much as anyone else.
To be fair, the film looks beautiful, and I believe a good story could have been told within the realm it presents. For a chosen-one fantasy quest, I'll stick with Dogma.