Liv Tyler didn't ruin it!

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2001)

This movie was phenomenal. Upon going to see it, I was somewhat skeptical about how hollywood would wind up finally treating the LOTR. Having been a huge fan of these stories for years, I subsequently had very high expectations and was not disappointed. Upon seeing the trailers I was distressed at the casting of the very questionably talented Liv Tyler, but even she managed to avoid coming off as a moron and I found I could forget the awful cracker scene in armageddon (temporarily, anyway). The rest of the cast was flawless. Elijah Wood could not be cast better, as an unlikely hero who really would rather be somewhere else but accepted his responsibility. He had real screen chemistry with both Ian McKellan (they seemed to be old friends!) and the excellent Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee. I remember seeing the Goonies long ago and am so happy to see Sean getting a good role and knocking it out as well as he did! The scenery is simply breathtaking. Wow!! doesn't even begin to describe it. The color, the sets, the detail, the fantastic fact that they don't rely on crappy CGI to do everything, but instead use real people in ORC suits for the bad guys and fantastic settings for what is a really fleshed out middle earth. Most of the movie was almost exactly as I had imagined it reading the books. WOW wow wow. I wondered how any movie came out and catapulted to the top of the IMDB list, but this movie really is like nothing you've ever seen before. A++++ 10/10.