Good but not great

Rating: Null/10 (24 December 2001)

Possible spoilers below.
A 9.5 rating? Methinks its a conspiracy by all of the Tolkien geeks. I read the books one after the other about 10 years ago (and recently read the Silmarillion) and although I found the movie to be a fantastic achievement by Peter Jackson (his Heavenly Creatures is in my top five of all time), it just didn't have that special something that could have made it great. Here are some of the things, in my mind, that keep LOTR from being in a class with Lawrence of Arabia and the Godfather.(and I'm only making those comparisons because all of you guys have elevated this movie to that level, in which it just can't hang)
Terrible fight choreography was one thing that comes to mind. The editing seemed kind of slapdash...didn't really feel like it "flowed". Did they really need to buff up the Awrwen parts just to give women something to cheer for? If you're going to take liberties with the material, at least make the Wizard fight something spectacular...just getting knocked around was kind of lame. And oh, Sean Bean sucks.
The good stuff...the Hobbit shrinking was awesome...at no time did I "notice it". The Balrog was an unbelievable creation. Scary s**t. The cave troll was cool as well. And the story itself is one of my favorites of all time.
I'm going to see it again because the first theater I went to had no digital sound(when the cave troll slammed his hammer down, I couldn't even feel it) so maybe this time it'll hit me. I really wanted to like this film more than I did, but I just didn't feel like I was watching something great...