a movie to sleep through

Rating: 1/10 (17 January 2002)

this film is a work of genius. marketing genius. i went along because friends insisted it was great, two having seen the film three times. i found not a single scene showing any real imagination. i noticed the guy next to me nodding off. yet he swore he loved the film. what is going on here has something more to do with psychology and marketing than filmmaking or aesthetics. i like sex and violence, but there was no sex and the violence was so ridiculously schmaltzy i could only yawn. i was a student at oxford at the end of tolkien's life, read all his books and have an appreciation of what he was trying to do in his books. yet how odd that i cannot find a single redeeming feature of this film. i love crap films with no intellectual content that entertain. it was with heartfelt relief that i saw the credits begin to come up. thank god i could get out of the theatre.