Well at least it was better than 'Phantom Menace'!

Rating: Null/10 (27 December 2001)

I was dragged to see 'The Fellowship Of The Ring Last' (the opening day here in Perth). I won't exaggerate and say "kicking and screaming" but I certainly wasn't looking forward to it. I've never been able to stomach Tolkien. After reading 'The Hobbit' as a young child I was never able to finish any of his other books. Mervyn Peake is the guy for me, I'm afraid.
Anyway, the books are not what this is about, it's the movie. Is it any good? The short answer - for kids possibly yes, for adults no. It's really hard to see how anyone over the age of say fifteen could spend more than ten minutes even thinking about this movie after having watched it. It just isn't worth it. All I can say is that it wasn't as embarrassing as the trite 'Phantom Menace'. But is that what we have come to? Even pretending that movies like 'Harry Potter' and 'Pearl Harbor' and 'Titanic' and this one are even worth discussing? If anyone can truly fool themselves into thinking that 'The Fellowship Of The Ring' or the other recent "blockbusters" I mentioned are to be mentioned in the same breath as 'The Wizard Of Oz' or 'Casablanca' or 'Lawrence Of Arabia' or 'The Thief Of Baghdad' or 'Spartacus', movies that truly enriched the imagination, then you're welcome to it.
This movie was torture to sit through. Millions of dollars spent, sure, but an empty, uninvolving experience. Cardboard characters going through a series of endless "adventures", on and on and on and on. Elijah Wood's stunned mullet expression, wide-eyes-perpetually-on-the-verge-of-tears, worked well enough in Ang Lee's 'The Ice Storm', but irritated me beyond belief here. He hasn't the star quality to carry this movie, let alone two sequels. And his fellow hobbits, the guy from 'The Goonies' and two interchangable twits, I'm supposed to empathize with these idiots? At least the rest of the cast aren't as bad, though it makes you cringe to see British veterans Ians McKellern and Holm dragged out to give it some kind of credibility (?), and poor Christopher Lee (one of my childhood idols) having to be involved in this tripe! But even legends have to pay the bills I suppose.
The only good thing about the overlong bore is that it will hopefully make the wonderful Viggo Mortensen the star he has been threatening to be since Sean Penn's underrated 'The Indian Runner' ten years ago. Mortensen steals every scene he is in. He's great, the movie isn't. That's all folks.