Spellbinding

Rating: 6/10 (14 August 2002)

...no, not the movie, but the response here. I can only hope that all of the fans of the books are projecting their love of the books onto what is at best a decent fantasy film and overall just better than average. How this got a top 5 ranking here is quite beyond my imagination.

ATTENTION: Spoilers ahead.
Now for those of you that say this is true to the book, I say fine but a movie has to stand on its own regardless of what it's based on, and here's what I saw when I watched it:
The performances were decent at best. Our hero and his graybeard mentor seemed believable. Those performances were good if not outstanding. The balance of the cast fell into the acceptable "along for the ride" category or the almost hard to watch "over the top" group. Count the chief villain in the over the top group.
The special effects were interesting but seemed to have reached beyond their grasp. Very few of the settings seemed real. For those book fans that would counter that they seemed true to the book, I again say fine, but they didn't appear real and to me that makes them poor. Well done effects should blend so seamlessly into the background that you can't tell them from the real thing by looking. For a setting, you should be wondering where they found that location, not saying "hey, that's pretty cool computer graphics work". The same goes for most of the FX characters - they just looked computer generated and to me that makes them poor even though they were interesting. They did a more realistic monster in Return of the Jedi almost two decades ago.
Like nearly all three hour movies, it would have greatly benefited from being only a two hour movie. Additionally, (and again I don't really care if it's true to the book) the ending was simply horrible. I was actually startled when the credits started to roll. I've seen many movies that were only one part of a multi-part story, but each has been able to stand on its own. This story was incomplete and I simply can't imagine sitting through another 6 hours of this to finally get to the conclusion - the story just isn't compelling enough for that. One three hour movie that got all the way to the finish might have been acceptable, but not three of them.
Finally, not to throw flames at those of you who loved these books, because maybe the movie wasn't completely true to them or maybe it was simply done much better in the book, but the story itself didn't seem all that well done either. We have these nine characters on a quest (at least one of whom was able to hop a ride on Big Bird for a while but apparently didn't think the same transport would work for this trip), at least three of them have no purpose but to get the others into trouble, and all of them together show no more camaraderie than the prima donnas at the last "Divas Live" show. A few of these characters are apparently pretty decent guys to have around in a fight given their ability to singlehandedly fight off literal swarms of blade wielding zombies, but frankly, I really didn't care who lived or died in this film (although I do admit I was sorry to see graybeard go down since his was the best performed part in the show).
I really don't mean to rip too hard on this movie, it was an OK flick for the genre and I though it was somewhat enjoyable despite its length. But - how it managed to snare a nomination for the Best Picture Oscar or get a top 5 ranking here is completely unfathomable. Anyone describing this work as a "masterpiece", IMHO, really needs to get out more.
I give it a 6 - just barely better than average.