Wonderful if you've read the story...if not...????

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2001)

I read The Lord of the Rings more years ago than I want to count. I also saw a weak effort to make part of it into a movie in 1978..."el stinko"!! But this time I was bolstered by the early reviews and my wife and I went tonight. She had never read the book and she thought it was just barely passable and too long. I remembered how I visualized Froto Baggins and I have got to say my mental picture wasn't Elijah Wood. Conversely my minds view of Bilbo Baggins was Ian Holm to a tee or vice versa.
The special effects and Middle Earth were better then I imagined them as were many of the other effects and battle scenes. Yet I have mixed feelings about this effort. If I have to wait until next Christmas for part two it will be a drag, plus knowing that it is already "in the can" makes me wonder if the studio is just waiting to see before deciding on a February release on part two? Either way for we of the 60 plus million who have purchased the book, we are hooked to see the next two parts and those who haven't read the stories will likely not be back anyway, so why wait? This is good work on a very hard subject to convert to the screen.