What I'm smoking.

Rating: 10/10 (20 March 2002)

Longbottom leaf apparently. People who criticize this movie are missing the entire point. No - absolutely this movie isn't as good as The Godfather, or Shawshank Redemption, or Citizen Kane. It isn't a fair comparison. Those movies are ART. This is unabashedly a movie. Yeah, when you claim this is the best film ever you're being silly, but when you claim it's stupid and horrible you're either trolling, disliking to be cool (like a lot of us did with Titanic. Face it, pretty good movie, especially the parts without Kate and Leo) or judging on the wrong criteria.
Would you criticize Indiana Jones or King Kong for having wooden characters? What about Star Wars? They all do. But in depth character development is not as important to adventure movies as it is to character studies / biopics like The Godfather. Lord of the Rings is certainly not the best movie ever made (and I'm not sure it deserves to be number 2...) but it is THE BEST fantasy adventure ever made. And since there are so many of those, it does deserve to be pretty high on the list. It isn't high art like Picasso, or popular chaw like Thomas Kincaide. It's a cultural artifact. Whether it's any good or not, I imagine we'll all be watching this movie in twenty years.
Think about it... is Tremors any good? And don't we all still watch it? Lord of the Rings is in the same class as the "New Classics" most of which - you'll note, are NOT movies like In the Bedroom or Beautiful Mind.

And for those of you who couldn't follow the plot. I'm sorry - try Ritalin. It wasn't that difficult - you're just not paying attention.