Not for the weak-stomached - this schlock will make you puke

Rating: 3/10 (21 November 2004)

High budget nonsense aimed at those who suspend their disbelief before the opening titles have even finished and need the sound-track to tell them what emotion to feel, I've not seen cinematographic schlock like this since E.T.
The plot plods along with little cycles of "mistake", "grave danger", "solution/escape", and by the third or 4th such cycle it gets quite tawdry. I guess JRR's to blame in part, but the utter predictability of the whole film, even down to the details, by someone who's _not_ read the book, indicates that all we have here is the playing out of standard fantasy/adventure/action clichés, and nothing even vaguely capable of stimulating or challenging someone familiar with more than a few films.
So lets not look at all the difficult stuff like weaving a plot, and see if it can redeem itself through special effects instead...
Sorry, nothing new here, except new ways to demonstrate how to make visual and physical errors. For example, for some bizarre reason they decided that they wanted to make the lighting as unbelievable as possible, which they suceeded at grandly. With monster CGI looking like it had barely moved forwards since Quake, more polygons, perhaps, I almost felt like I was watching my N64 at times.
Nope, I really don't have anything positive to say about this film. A big ball of hype but absolutely nothing promised was delivered.
FatPhil