I guess it was, well...

Rating: Null/10 (19 December 2001)

Well, let me start out by mentioning that I've only read the first 100 pages of the Fellowship of the Ring, so I'm not really in a position to compare the film to the book. Despite this, I'd like to make some comparisons. Which could be a very stupid decision on my part, but what the hell. Just take what I say with a big chunk of salt.
In comparing the film to the book, I'm not concerned about technical details--I don't get hung up over the fact that the plots of the two movies may be slightly different. I'm more interested in the feeling and mood. In this vein, I would easily call the movie "action-packed", but I would not say the same of the book. One of the things I really admired about the small part I read of the book was, well, the "patience" of it all. Maybe that's not the right word for it, but one of the things that set LOTR apart from other fantasy novels for me was the way Tolkien used the English language, and the way he paced the story. Everything I read had a very balanced, restrained mood to it--even parts that had a lot of action. For instance, the dark riders in the book evoked in me not a sense of horror or outright thrill (as they did in the film), but more of a malicious kind of mysteriousness. And that mysteriousness was subtle, or at least restrained: the less Tolkien used language to concretely describe the actions and appearances of the riders, the more scary they seemed in my mind. For me, at least. And although I only read 100 pages of it, LOTR didn't really seem like the kind of work that would focus on battles and fighting mayhem quite as much as the film--in fact, as I recall, those hundred pages I read didn't mention a single one.
Well, anyways, that's just a few examples. In the end, all I can really say is that the film was very visceral and intense, and what I read of the book was not. The special effects were wonderful, but many times the film was just visually over-stimulating, flooding me with so much eye candy that my eyes just went sort of "numb" to it all and I got bored. And sometimes I felt as though substituting some special effects with more traditional techniques--such as cutting, changes in cinematography or more abstract visual presentation (e.g. showing the shadows of the dark riders instead of what they actually looked like), or simply the removal of the effects--could have made parts of the movie more immersive. A few of the characters were paper-thin, such as the dwarf Gimli, and a few were just underdeveloped or a little confusing because they didn't have very much screen time, like Galadriel.
All this isn't to say that the movie didn't have its memorable moments; in fact, it had many. Although some of the action scenes in the movie got very tedious and routine, some of it was also incredibly cool. Although nothing in the movie was really tear-jerking for me, I did share the joys and laments of some of the more well developed characters. All of the performances were great. And knowing what I don't like about the movie now, I imagine I'll focus more on the positive aspects of the film when I see it next, and I'll probably enjoy it a lot more. For the time being, though, I do wish the film shared some of the "patient" style of storytelling that the book had--it would have been very interesting to see, say, Wim Wenders or Jim Jarmusch direct this--but at least the final product was far better than most other fantasy films I've seen.