My personal favorite of the trilogy

Rating: 8/10 (6 October 2004)

I know it's not fashionable at this time, but I do consider this to be my favorite one in the series.
The introduction of the shire was very well done, and magical. The opening scene between Frodo and Gandalf had a lot of personality; thematic without being preachy, and setting up ideas without giving too much of the plot away. Gandalf and Bilbo played off each other brilliantly. The special effects (especially with demonstrating the size difference of the various species) was impressive, without being distracting. And Bilbo's birthday was fun and lighthearted, but still with the sinister undertone foreboding the future turmoil. At this stage in the story, I was well on my way to putting the series in my top 100 list; but subsequent scenes and the later movies caused me to lower my rating a fraction. Still - the trilogy overall gets an 8/10 from me.
I am very impressed by Peter Jackson with his effective mixture of humor and suspense/horror. I rank the dinner scene between Pippin and Merry as one of the best comic relief moments in a non-comic story ever. And Sean Astin's Samwise had the same serio-comic mixture, spot on perfect. (I always knew Sean had a good knack for doing both comedy and drama - he's always demonstrated it).
A few minor quibbles I had with this movie were Frodo's gratuitous cameo shot in the party scene - which I felt looked staged and forced; and the very heavy-handed thematic speeches in the climactic discussion between Frodo and Boromir (premonition to the way-too-much moralizing in the city scene of THE TWO TOWERS).
Yeah, I know this is a serious fantasy, and it's very important for characters to make thematic statements in order for the intelligentsia to justify telling a fictional story (apparently); but really, do you have to be so bleedin' obvious about it?! Can't you give the viewers a little credit for working out the underlying themes for themselves, without totally spoon-feeding us on every psychological nuance with the subtlety of a sledgehammer? Honestly, most summer blockbusters can get away with the barest minimum of character development, and a lot of viewers still follow the storyline pretty closely anyway. Not all of us are dumb popcorn-munching idiots!
Anyway, griping aside; this is still great epic storytelling. The casting, the art direction and the pacing are (in the main) top quality. It was great intelligent entertainment! After all, this is the most critically-acclaimed popularly entertaining film trilogy of all time - and deservedly so!!!