Everything you've heard is true.

Rating: 10/10 (22 December 2001)

As someone who has continually put off reading Tolkien's novel, I finally gave in and read this weighty tome this year. I completed it just before the release of Fellowship of the Ring, and have to admit that, while the book was very good, I found it to be extremely heavy handed in places, downright dull in others and not a little dated in a lot of ways. It's still a classic book, and well worth reading, but contrary to the whinings of Tolkien fanatics, I'm not convinced by it's place as the Novel of the 20th Century.

So to the movie. It, too, may have it's flaws (and God knows, it certainly has it's detractors, many of whom, I suspect, regard themselves as the guardians of Tolkien's book), but I have to say I liked it. In fact, I loved it. More than that, I believe it is easily the best thing I've seen projected on to the screen this year. You can go through it scene by scene, referring back to the novel, moaning that Peter Jackson's vision of Middle Earth and it's inhabitants doesn't match yours, but hey, TOUGH! Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have taken a huge gamble in bringing LotR to the screen in the first place and you have to ask yourself, rather than carping, would you prefer that they hadn't bothered at all? If you seriously think that the little movie you played in your head when you read the book should be the sacrosanct blueprint for something that has cost $300 million, then I suggest you stay at home and read your tattered copy of The Silmarillion or The Hobbit (which, incidentally, I think is a less pretentious and more rewarding book). If you accept that the book is just the starting point for a movie (as it should be: Harry Potter is an example of what happens when you are slavishly faithful to a source novel), go and see it. I think you'll like it.
I was literally blown away by the spectacle I saw here. Jackson's imagining of Tolkien's world is magnificent, creating something that is both intimate in it's examination of friendship and camaraderie, and epic in it's presentation of evil threatening good on a large scale. Visually, the movie is continually interesting and, if there are a few ropey moments a la dialogue or whatever, the cracks are plastered over expertly by a great cast (McKellen, Wood, Astin, and Lee being particular standouts). My favourite characters in the book (Sam and Gollum) are tantalisingly shown here, promising great things for their expanded roles in the next two chapters.
Hoeward Shore's pounding score deserves a mention, matching the fierceness of Jackson's passion for his material on screen, and providing a strong emotional accompaniment to the director's unfailing eye.

There will be people who don't like this just as there many highly regarded movie that I don't like. But if you are being dismissive because of an occasional lapse in a special effect, or whatever, please get a life. Great movies all have their flaws and Fellowship of the Ring is a great movie. It is also a big movie, important and even classic and in a year where you sometimes you get the impression that filmmakers have lost all nerve and ambition (Pearl Harbor and Planet of the Apes, anyone), thank God for it.
Along with equally flawed, risk taking projects in 2001 like Moulin Rouge and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, The Fellowship of the Rings should be what movies are all about. Excellent stuff.
10/10