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Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2002)

It's a rather hard movie to describe, honestly. I loved it...but I'll readily admit I loved it because I loved the story before it was ever filmed.
There were flaws, not a few. Some are minor Tolkienite quibbles I won't bore you with (like say, where was Andúril, why was Sam blond, etc.,) others are glaring--Nazgûl make bad synchronized swimmers and were not scary at all, and I *still* can't tell Merry and Pippin apart. One horrid error I feel was one that was unfortunately rather unavoidable--why would anyone expect anyone unfamiliar with Tolkien to keep the names of the Fellowship straight? I think Boromir's name was mentioned twice...I know if I were coming in "untainted" I wouldn't have known his name by the end of the film.
I've seen it twice--the first time I came in with certain expectations, desired to claw the silver screen to shreds over a few moments filmed and those filmed differently, but otherwise I was impressed by the compression that took place. It was a monumental task. I also felt very much willing to sit for six more hours to see it all.
The second time I realized the scenes filmed differently were done to make up for certain scenes not filmed at all (Frodo crossing the Fords alone was made up for by the scene at Weathertop, which I had missed on the first viewing, since I expected to see Frodo on the horse ALONE the first time...*grumbles about Mary Sue Arwen*), and I also came to appreciate how well Sean Bean played Boromir in the film. I also realized there was a second movie there, one which I was unable to see because I came in so steeped in the book. I've wondered what that movie was like.
Well...I do have to say I don't appreciate the comments made by other reviewers directed at the people who like Tolkien...as if a book could become such a classic by only having one stereotypical sort of person read it...and it's not a children's book...neither is the movie a children's movie.
Perhaps Tolkien was right, and Fantasy can never be made into Drama. Maybe that's why so many fantasy movies fail. But this one did an admirable job--it is a good movie, it is well acted...but I do think that the movie I saw was probably better than the one a newbie to Tolkien did, if only because I came in knowing the characters and didn't need the movie to tell me what they were like. I can see why otherwise the characters would seem flat. One might come out of the theatre wondering if Frodo knew how to unfurrow his brow! (He does, and he knows how to laugh too, and have fun, and make a grand fool of himself!)
Still feel bad for Frodo...he got kicked around an awful lot, both in the book and in the movie, but because of time constraints they couldn't show that the other characters got kicked around a bit as well.
Note to some: The last lines with Frodo and Sam..."I don't suppose we shall see them again." "Yet we may, Mr. Frodo. We may." are DIRECTLY out of the book and not a way to show there are sequels on the way. It was meant to show that Frodo tends to hopelessness, while Sam is a bit more on the optimistic side. Perhaps it sounded like a way of shouting "Hey! Sequel!", but, alas, it was not. It's a shame it sounded that way, when it was actually character development.
Well, all told, it was a great movie. I don't know that it was robbed for Best Picture, having not seen the others, but if the conservative Academy nominated it for 13 awards, there must have been SOMETHING done right.