CU Film Critic takes on "Fellowship"

Rating: Null/10 (9 December 2001)

I read `The Hobbit' in fourth grade, loved it, and then proceeded to ignore the rest of the Lord of the Rings series for about 13 years.
That is, until I realized I had three days before screening the first of three new films based on the trilogy, `The Fellowship of the Ring.' Luckily, I had a little time, and knocked out the first book in exactly enough time. I finished it, in fact, roughly seventeen minutes before the screening began.
Some of you, I would imagine, have been living in a cave for the past fifty or so years, so it rests on me to give you the basic rundown of the story in question. Keep in mind, I'm not exactly a Tolkien scholar, so you'll be getting the Cliffs Notes version.
In the fantasy world of Middle Earth, there exists an ancient ring imbued with evil by the Dark Lord Sauron (imagine if Christopher Walken and Jack Nicholson had a kid who grew up listening to a lot of Danzig), which is lost, then through a series of chance conincidences, finds its way into the hands of the quiet, fun-loving Hobbit Frodo (Elijah Wood). Hobbits, you ask? Short people with fuzzy toes who would rather be eating and hanging out with their amigos than, say, slaying dragons and such (under this definition, it appears I could also be considered a Hobbit).
Whatever the case, the whole ring situation is just a bad scene all around, and someone's got to get rid of the thing. The esteemed wizard Gandalf (the guy from the `Sorcerer's Apprentice' minus the brooms), played by Ian McKellen, shows up with good news for Frodo: All they've got to do is put together a crew that can haul the ring down to what is basically hell itself and destroy the thing without going mad or becoming possessed.
The film is great not because the acting is great (though it is), not because the special effects almost caused me to soil myself (which they almost did), and not because the screenplay was virtually perfect (which it was). `The Fellowship of the Ring' works as a film because the story is just THAT entertaining.
Little gems of wisdom abound. Sauron, for example, is the Dark Lord and basically the thorn in everyone's side. The thing is, he's not really evil; when it comes down to it, he's just mean. He hates and destroys good things because they're good. But beyond that, we don't know a whole lot about his motivations.
The movie (or book, for that matter) doesn't give us any insight whatsoever about this, but we soon realize that evil or not, Sauron's not really the issue. Where instead do we see the real evil? In Frodo, his uncle Bilbo (Ian Holm), and the members of the Fellowship. Their internal corruptions and temptations are hundreds of times scarier than anything we get from the `bad guys.' Still, that's not to say the film doesn't have its share of creepy antagonists. You're gonna have to see those for yourself.
Need more reasons? Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving (yes, Agent Smith from `The Matrix' plays the benevolent Elf King- this film is every geek's dream), and Sean Astin. Above all, though, Ian Holm's screen time as Bilbo is worth the price of admission alone.
I'm not a die-hard `Rings' fanatic, so die-hards may think I'm a little too quick to applaud the `hollywood-izing' of their favorite classic. To be fair, then, `Fellowship' gets a `B+.'