You can always put a book down...

Rating: 6/10 (2 April 2002)

Of course, you can always put a book down... which is the only reason Tolkien's work is even remotely bearable. Peter Jackson attempts to please the legions of people who have forgotten that they put 'Lord of the Rings' down at least twice per page and swore they'd never read it again have resulted in 3 hours of turgid nonsense. What follows would be SPOILERS, but pretty much everyone on the planet has to know the plot by now:
'Fellowship of the Rings' is the emptiest 3 hours I have ever spent. What actually happens? Cute hobbits, birthday party, nasty ring, take it to Mordor... ooh, Black Riders - run away!... ooh, orcs - run away!... ooh, more orcs - we can't run away! But here comes a Balrog... RUN AWAY! Let's cross some mountains, wander through some mines, have the entire story explained to us by some fairies. Hmm, dramatic tension ebbing a bit... ooh! Look! More orcs - run away! Oh, we can't. OK, we'll have a fight then, and lose instead. But off go Frodo and his light-relief sidekick, cos the poor little hobbits can't trust anyone not to steal their ring. When Aragorn, son of Arathorn, son of somebody else ending in 'orn' announced that it was 'Time to hunt some orc' I was on the verge of standing up in the cinema and screaming, but fortunately it was the end. At one point my girlfriend, who hadn't been paying attention, noticed Frodo was walking through a bleak landscape and whispered 'Have I missed something? Has he got rid of the ring already?'. Oh no, no, no, my little innocent - you've got to sit through another SIX HOURS of this nonsense before that happens.
DO NOT WASTE YOUR LIFE. Don't bother reading the book instead - you can get on with other things at the same time, like watching paint dry.