Well done, but is it OK for my kid? And what does fantasy mean about our relationship to the real world?

Rating: Null/10 (2 January 2002)

I saw the Fellowship of the Ring on the pretext that I needed to preview it for my 8 year old daughter. She's reading the book and wants to see the movie (I read the books ages ago - maybe in the first age ;-). It's got lots of dark, scary images coming at you fast, and goes on and on. But other children her age and younger watched it, seemingly without difficulty. I'd like to see them after a night's sleep, though; Did they have nightmares?
I had a generally good time. It's better than I'd have imagined for a movie of its kind, but the fantasy fans are raving more than I am. I'm not a CGI fan. I like minimal fake scenery or any natural scenery. Of course, I said much the same thing about Matrix but watched it a couple times ;-). LOTR is well done, although I think Hugo Weaving suffers a bit (liked him as the blind photographer in that older film). He's very earnest, as is Cate Blanchett (spelling?) who nonetheless comes off better. Yes, Gandalf played by Ian McKellen is very good. Christopher Lee is fun if only for being Christopher Lee (Is he still alive or just "reanimated" like his Frankenstein monsters?). Actually, he could have overdone the Saruman role but didn't. Lee really fit his role. And I always appreciate Ian Holm. He's Bilbo the old hobbit in this. I've seen him play priests, gangsters, nice ol' guys, and now a hobbit. Always good. How do they make all the "big" people so big compared to the hobbits? And John Rhys-Davies - who I remember as a rather large actor in, among other things, the first Indiana Jones movie - is a dwarf in this. How? Sean Bean, last seen in 007 and MI2 action films as the bad guy, gets to have an ennobling and perfectly well acted... (shhhh! Don't spoil it.). The bad guys who arrive at the last scenes in the movie, on the other hand, look like parodies of Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans. It looks like they fell in the mud and got pelted by pigeon poop, and are just real mad about it.
Why do I have trouble in this day and age with a totally white movie? Sometimes it's appropriate, like when it's a story that takes place in a totally white place or just between totally white people. But somehow it's not enough for me, in this movie, that there are elves and dwarves and hobbits as goodies. It worries me that "white" americans may escape not only to movies but to defacto segregated ones. This was, of course, written in the early part of the century, possibly as a WWI parable (Although why forget the colonial wars of that era - in China, Africa, Palestine, the Americas? Talk about the influence of Mordor!), and by someone steeped in the myths and languages of his islands. I have a twinge of fear that members of the audience might like to lose themselves in this never-never land, wanting to give up on the larger world. I liked Gandalf's line about us needing to choose what to do in our time. So, Enjoy. And then come back to reality.