Much Better Books.

Rating: 4/10 (24 December 2001)

I'm not claiming that this movie isn't great because it doesnt live up or accurately depict the series of the books. I'm claiming its not great because it simply isn't great. To me, it's a pretty average film. Something for the kids, maybe, if you can find a kid that can sit still for 3 hours. The combination of over-used plot devices, under-developed and painfully similar looking characters (the two other hobbits besides frodo and the chubby one looked like twins, as did the two humans, ryder and the other one, with the same hair-cut and facial hair), and tedius nature of the film makes this one for video rental. Theres simply nothing amazing going on here, and the movie came off as rather tripe. No clever dialogue. No charm. No depth at all. This film simply takes itself too seriously. Although it's a much better fantasy film that the horrible, recently released Dungeons & Dragons, It in no way deserves to be the number one movie on imdb. In my opinion it doesn't even belong in the top 250. Theres something unsatisfying about fantasy films in the 21st century and I think I know what it is. Instead of focusing on character development and clever writing, too many film makers are using computer models and animation to deliver a story, thinking that the visuals will be enough to carry the movie. We can see the same mentality in star wars, episode one. The original trilogy contained 3 fantastic films, but the phantom menace, quite bluntly, sucked donkey. Jar jar was a completely useless computer generated character that they made just because they could. He had no relevance to the movie! Star Wars episode 5 a new hope, however, didnt have the kind of budget to make a useless movie with useless characters like its successor did. It had to rely on a good story, appealing actors, and enjoyable, but not over-blown action sequences. It seems like LOTR and many sci-fi/fantasy movies coming out these days just have pointless cgi characters and sequences, with awful stories and awful actor-characters thrown in at the last minute so theres an excuse for all the computer generated stuff to appear in the first place, and that my friends, is truly sad. This movie would be much better if it were made 20 or 30 years ago.