Sailing on the crest of literary reputation

Rating: 4/10 (10 January 2002)

Being someone who has not read the books, I approached this movie as it should be approached; I had no expectations, no knowledge of the plot and no idea how it would be conveyed.
I have read many reviews, all of which claim that The Fellowship of the Ring is an outstanding piece of cinema. That is undeniable.
As a piece of cinema, it was as good as anything that has ever preceded it, however, a good movie, is not about cinema alone, there are so many more elements that are needed, such as narrative, dialogue, acting and pace.
As superb as the cinematography and SFX were, I cannot help but feel that the other, more key, elements were indeed neglected.
The opening narration from Cate Blanchett was probably the high point of the feature; I felt the excitement and the anticipation built here were wasted on such a poor movie.
The dialogue was laughable, even cringe-worthy, how they got away with scripting that is unbelievable.
The acting in general was poor, but this may have been a result of such a poor script, however, I feel compelled to exclude Ian McKellen, as he seemed to be the only cast member who put any feeling into their role.
Throughout the three hours I noticed that, like most fantasy films, it was all a bit repetitive. How many times could they get into trouble, Frodo put on the ring and then escape, without it becoming monotonous?
In all I am amazed at the amount of people who have contributed to this movie being currently (10th January 02) ranked #1 in the top 250 movies, over 21,000 people giving it a score of 10/10, maybe I was watching a different film.