Overwhelming!

Rating: 10/10 (20 December 2001)

Outstandingly luscious, overwhelmingly beautiful.
Peter Jackson has given us a remarkable adventure tale that although not in lock-step with the books is a wonderful adaptation.
The film moved very quickly through the vast work giving us all glimpses of many of our favorite scenes. Many of the decisions made to deviate from the book were well done. Personally, I thought he did well on about 85% of the changes.
This vision of the elves, dwarves, hobbits, and orcs was stunning. The cast did a tremendous job, in particular, Elijah Woods is subtle and compelling as Frodo. There was too much that was good to identify individually. A couple little things tickled me most: Legolas walking on the snow without sinking in; and the use of dialog directly out of the book at times.
I only had severe reservations on two counts: changing some of the motivational backstory for Aragorn; and changing the ending of the book in ways that will have some impact on the motivations of the characters as the quest continues.
One minor gripe was the lack of subtitles indicating long spans of time. People unfamiliar with the book would not have realized that Bilbo had not aged in an accelerated way, but rather the times between when he and Frodo left the Shire were many years apart.
Amazingly this 3h15min movie flew by leaving me wanting more of Lothlorien, Rivendell, and Moria. Just to see how the passing was going I looked at my watch 1h45min into the movie and was surprised, it could have been 10 minutes.
Now the angst of waiting begins for the Two Towers.
Bravo for Peter Jackson and thanks for not damaging what is truly one of the greatest works of the English language.