Good, but not that good

Rating: 7/10 (25 February 2002)

I have to give Lord of the Rings credit. Despite running almost three and a half hours, it kept my attention all the way through to the end. There have been a lot of movies I've seen that are significantly shorter but I end up checking my watch every so often anyway (most notably every Kevin Smith movie I've been forced to sit through.) But I wouldn't consider it to be the #2 movie of all time, I wouldn't even consider it to be Oscar worthy. I found a lot of movies ranked lower on the top 250 (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Matrix, The Shawshank Redemption, Snatch, Seven, and Glory just to name a few) to be a lot more entertaining than Lord of the Rings. The acting was good enough, Peter Jackson did a fine job of directing, but there is nothing really special about it. Maybe I'll change my opinion after I see the two sequels. It's definitely worth seeing, but don't expect it to be a world beater.
I think a 7.5 is a more accurate rating than 9.0.