Lock, stock and barrel...

Rating: 5/10 (8 January 2002)

Hype is the name of the game, and even the best of us sometimes fall for it; I did, when I read the plethora of glowing reviews of this movie. Did no one else notice the cheesy effects, the deadening performances, the often lackluster direction...? The movie has its moments, but mere moments do not a three hour film make. When it's not dragging along like a crippled animal, it's dashing headlong like a video game gone haywire. And that, I think, is the audience at which this one is aimed: the "shut-in" kids who spend most of their time (and tons of money) on video games and the ilk. Certainly it's not geared toward mature viewers, who quickly grow bored with the paper-thin plot (Tolkein has never been mistaken for a writer of great literary worth) and the even thinner film-making sleight-of-hand that Jackson employs. (I was genuinely shocked by some of the downright dunderheaded things the filmmakers tried to get away with when it came to fx- from incorrectly aligning composite images, to cheesy video game fx that never even come close to passing muster, to the use of what are quite clearly children in wide shots showing hobbits and humans and elves together.) I could go on, but there's really no point: the film is a financial success, and that's all that Jackson and company are concerned about, anyway. (Reminding me in that respect of Ridley Scott, a once promising director reduced now to making movies like the godawful HANNIBAL, who boldly proclaimed in one nationally televised interview, that he no longer cared what anyone else thought of his films.) One would do well to remember one thing: even if a million people say a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing.