Utter Failure

Rating: 3/10 (24 December 2001)

I'm shocked at how immensely popular this film is so far. I'm used to finding fault with overwhelmingly popular films. For instance, I think "American Beauty" is good, but far far over-rated. But this is something new for me. This is a film that is overwhelmingly adored, which I find to be not only over-rated, but not even any good at all.
This is a bad movie, plain and simple.
Its got a really bad script. The characters are terribly thin (with one exception: Gandalf), and certain events have been so hurried that either they lack all dramatic force (The Council of Elrond) or they are utterly impenetrable to someone who doesn't already know what's happening (Lothlorien). I realize that Jackson had the near impossible task of condensing The Fellowship of the Ring into a mere three hours (I think four is necessary, at an absolute minimum). But the decisions he made (what he omitted, what he condense, and what he lengthened) reveal his intention to make an epic action film, rather than an epic fantasy adventure film.

Even the flaws of this movie are entirely in keeping with that goal. Action movies don't need good characters. They need good special effects. Action movies don't need drama, they need fights.
There is a very small minority of filmgoers who feel that action is boring. As long as the characters are fighting, they are not in any way advancing the story. And for a story to be good, it has to move. There is plenty of movement in The Fellowship of the Ring. But there are also massive sequences where the story advances not one jot for unendurable stretches of time, to allow the characters (or their obviously computer-generated counterparts) to battle some massive computer-generated foe. The worst offender is the Moria sequence, which was at least twice as long as it ought to have been.
To those of you who say that this is the best movie ever made, I must strenuously disagree. It's not the best movie I've seen this year, much less ever. Nor is it the best movie I've seen this month, or even this week. This movie is bad.
And I loved the books.
Drew