a moderate opinion

Rating: 7/10 (13 January 2002)

This is the best film I've ever seen...involving lots of short people walking through the woods, fighting orcs!
Fans of the novels will adore this movie, and they are no doubt the people who have puffed up its ratings on this site. But I'm convinced that, beyond the realm of the Internet and the adolescent guys who love this kind of stuff, the film will have very limited appeal. Harry Potter - which is, incidentally, the better film - produced a tremendous buzz among the people who work in my office, particularly women, since it has a broader appeal and a more charming story that is easy to relate to. Everyone has gone to school and been intimidated by teachers and other students, like Harry Potter. Everyone with a unique talent has been sometimes rejected out of envy, like Harry Potter. Not everyone has had to trek through woods and swamps to chuck an all-powerful ring into the furnace of Mount Doom (and, indeed, that is all that Lord of the Rings is about - just think of it as a really long walk peppered with fights).
Let's face it, the nine-member Fellowship contains not a single woman to stem the free flow of testosterone. The movie is preoccupied with axe-swinging and monster-maiming, with only a few genuine moments of emotion coming from Ian Holm (Bilbo) and Ian McKellan (Gandalf), who are the by far the best actors in the picture. But Tolkein - and the film makers - seem to have a problem with Gandalf being too powerful, so at various points in the film he is conveniently injured or whisked away so the other characters can blunder into danger and generally be incompetent. Think of Gandalf as a star quarterback on a team that otherwise completely lacks talent...
The rest of the cast is fine, though some of the characters (Gimlee, Legolas, any hobbit who isn't Frodo or Bilbo) seem very skimpy and poorly developed. My brother referred to Gimlee as "nothing more than a talking axe," and he's dead right! Most of the flaws in the film are glossed over by the beautiful production values (though I wish the fans would stop whining that $100 million isn't a big budget - it's enormous) and Peter Jackson's exciting direction (though he hardly deserves an Oscar). I certainly didn't hate the thing but, like Star Wars, I find it overrated by critics and enthusiasts alike. I'm actually a big fan of fantasy/sci-fi, generally speaking, but when the fantasy universe is completely divorced from reality as this one is, my interest wanes.
Final verdict? Three out of four stars, though I felt obliged to make my review largely negative to counteract the floodtide of praise. Somehow, I don't think that the line "Let's go hunt some Orc" is going to replace "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship" in the hearts of movie fans!