big disappointment

Rating: 1/10 (30 December 2001)

After 1 year of anticipation TLOR has been a big disappointment. Granted, beautiful scenery, granted, spectacular computer techniques, but this is not the way to make a classic novel into a good picture. The casting of for instance Sam, a very important character in the story, is totally wrong; they made him into the fat clumsy schoolboy. Where are the lines of wisdom on Elrond's brow? How beautiful the scenery may have been, Tolkiens love lay in the Northern part of England and Scotland, where the names of the fells and river reflect those he used in the book. So why New Zealand? Most importantly, the acting was unforgivably stiff and unnatural. I don't know what people mean when they argue otherwise. The only way the director thought of showing the actors to play grief, for instance after the fall of Gandalf, was in letting them act in slow motion, already a sign of paucity. Frodo staring for minutes on end, with a tear running over his cheek, call cheap gipsy boy pictures in kitsch interiors to mind. One of the most important scenes of the first book, of course, is the council of Elrond, were the decision is made to destroy the Ring. What an opportunity for dialogue and what a farce the director made of it. The members attending the council were not properly introduced, nothing about the possibilities of using or getting rid of the ring, only a lot of noise and in the end a softheartened Frodo saying he will take it. That was that for a pivotal part in this classic novel. The music was simply awful and stomach-ache inducing. Nothing to be compared to the intelligent use of music and songs in the BBC-radioplay of 10 years ago. Arwen rescueing instead of Glorfindel's horse is doubtless put in because of Hollywood=dollar reasons. So TLOR done by this director is nothing more than a spectacular adventure story, as starwars, the lost menace and all that is. Happily the novel is so great that it won't suffer from this film; may be in twenty years time another director will have a go at it. This production is nothing more than a I think the film is a mere sacrifice to dollars and in that the quest has failed.