It's simply not that good

Rating: 1/10 (4 April 2002)

Sorry, but it really ISN'T as good a film as it's been made out to be. After seeing it shoot straight to the top of the IMDB charts, my immediate thought was that fans of Tolkien (or should that be zealots of Tolkien?) had already made up their minds to vote 10 out of 10 before they'd even seen the film. I was challenged by many people on this point, and having seen the film myself, I now know that I was right.
I can't say it enough, it simply isn't that good. At three hours, I found myself dozing off a number of times, and having to bring myself back to watching the film. The characters themselves were a mixed bag. Aside from some of the earliest scenes involving Frodo, Gandalf and Bilbo, those three did very well. Some of the comments on here seem to make them out to be gods, which isn't right, but they were definitely well above average. The other characters, aside from Samwise, were really not as good. They were so underdeveloped that I came out of the film not knowing the names of the majority of characters that had been in it.
The action itself was again above average, but still nothing spectacular. A lot of the computer generated stuff looked like large blobs of play-do, and some of the make-up etc. on the monsters was truly terrible. Some of it was absolutely ludicrous (the wizard's fight takes the cake there). And what was with the ring? Did the book state that we had to have a close-up of it every two minutes?
As most (zealots) may have guessed by now, I haven't read the book, and many claim that's why I didn't like it. My answer was, since when do you need to read a book before seeing the film? Do you normally need to read a film's script before watching it? Even so, much of it was predictable. Basically, after the opening, it was fight/hide from the baddies before moving onto the next part, then fight/hide again before moving on, then fighting and hiding again. And it goes on. And on.... for three hours.
It's all very straightforward. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and there isn't a lot more depth than that. The one double-cross can be seen straight-away, because the double-crosser looks very evil from the first time you meet him. There've also been a couple of jokes added in..... at least, that's what I read on here, I actually missed them during the film.
I've often read comments that state 'scenery and costumes were nice' and frankly, I totally disagree. Costumes aren't that good because they basically consist of rags for the most part, and the scenery once again, while nice enough, just isn't anything special.
I know of course that someone is going to read this comment and disagree with everything I've just said because 'Lord of the Rings is the greatest film ever.' I agree that it certainly is an above-average one (from a critical point of view anyway), just nowhere near the top 3 status of IMDB. As for the ending, yeah it was expected, but with any trilogy, each part of it has to tell its own story, rather than just be a part. Sadly, that wasn't the case in this film.
5.5/10
Frankly, the fact that it is so over-hyped and that whenever someone tries to say something bad against it, all the zealots rise up together and immediately rubbish that person's point of view, have made me hate it deeply, and it was difficult not to put a much lower score.