Excuse me, am I supposed to be impressed?...

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2002)

Probably the most over-hyped movie of 2001. Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is an in-your-face(literally, as far as those noisily shrieking orcs and ringwraiths are concerned) fantasy-road movie that ends up feeling like the world's longest and most expensive trailer for another movie.
Despite the (no doubt)immense work put into the production, only few things really work about the film. I suppose the costumes and minor props have been designed and built in a believable manner. And some of the sets certainly have an air of true grandeur(Though this is also undercut by Jackson's constant and pointlessly sweeping camera-movement). Apart from this, the movie is written, directed and scored in a surprisingly lazy and unimaginative manner.
The pacing of the story is all wrong, things just seem to keep on happening, with very little feeling for build-up, development or any *genuine* atmosphere to speak of. The characters are simply swept along by whatever turns the plot is required to take(and this in a movie that is very keen to constantly remind us that the relationships and development of it's characters are of utmost importance. There's so much overdone slo-mo hugging and crying it gets embarrassing)
Speaking of the characters....they all behave like stage-actors playing fantasy-archetypes with an almost comically overdone *grungy* theatricality, unable to bring any genuine sense of emotion or spontanity into their parts. Though frankly, I'm not really blaming the actors who, if nothing else, seem to be trying to play their parts with passion and conviction. The real problem(and this extends to every other part of the production) seems to be Jackson's one-note and untrained(for this type of film, anyway) film-making-style desperately trying to convince us he's making the greatest epic of our age by beating us over the head with manufactured awe and melodrama.
I suppose all this noise and fury does amount to some level of dubious entertainment-value. But this hardly makes it a great film.