Over-hyped by die-hards; has flaws but still good

Rating: Null/10 (22 December 2001)

Let me start with a comment that will make die-hard Tolkien fans cringe: I have not read the books. I am familiar with the '70s animated versions and have only recently started reading "The Hobbit," but I knew almost next-to-nothing about what I'd be seeing on the screen. The good news is I liked what I saw. The not-so-good news is that it sure ain't perfect. Because the filmmakers obviously wanted to cater to the hardcore readers of the original trilogy, the end result becomes somewhat stiff. There isn't any real flow to the narrative. Gripes you may have heard about "chase, battle, rest; chase, battle, rest; repeat, etc." turn out to be true. In many ways, in terms of filmmaking and narrative, LORD OF THE RINGS gets stuck in a predictable rut fairly early on. After awhile, well, everything starts to look and sound the same. The score doesn't seem to have enough color in it, and many of the CGI-rendered landscapes, while pretty, still end up being fairly ho-hum, because in this day and age, no one can seriously gawk at a fantasy film and marvel, "How did they do THAT?" The common one-word answer: Computers. Hence, a little bit of magic is lost.
Before this becomes a pan of a review, however, let me say there is still much to enjoy. ALL of the actors are superb, even if some of their dialogue comes off as stilted (but then, that's the case with most fantasy and/or historical films) and there certainly is real drama and action to suck you in. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of CGI, many effects are still gorgeous to look at.
(There is only one sequence that I just did not care for at all, and actually had some audience members cracking-up in the theater I saw the film in... the battle between Saruman and Gandalf was just plain laughable. There's something about two old guys throwing each other around with invisible forcefields and grunting at the top of their lungs that is just flat-out silly. Surely, there could have been a classier way of showing these two characters metaphysically duke it out?)
All-in-all, if you're a die-hard, I'm sure you'll absolutely love seeing literary characters you've loved for years come to life on the big screen. Others, like me, who don't walk into a theater expecting ANY film to be a life-changing experience, may still enjoy a first-class production, but may leave the theater scratching their heads and thinking, "What was all the hubbub about?"