Good Story, Bad Movie

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2001)

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. The story is incredible in book and on screen, but the Screen Adaptation was lackluster. The jokes and the drama were pretty cheezy in a lot of places. They still worked, but for a classic like the LOtR Trilogy I would hope for a more mature movie.
And the cinematography was wretched. They repeated the same over-done, helicopter-circling-establishing-shot every time the fellowship came to a new location. The action scenes were largely shot in the hand-held, up close style and while I admit there is some use for this, it is hardly original, and I think we would prefer to actually SEE the action!
And the character's sizes were all wacked out...I understand it was hard to make big people into little people, but for the amount of money put into this movie I think the sizes could have been constant.
But as I said it was a great story, I loved watching the movie, I just wish it had been done by a more capable director+crew.