Grandiose scenary, but a weak story.

Rating: 1/10 (12 August 2002)

I'm ignoring the fact that this was a book conversion and judging purely as a film.
I haven't read the book and I'm not overly interested in children's films, but I thought with Peter Jackson at the helm, that maybe this would be a more adult version of an alleged classic. I like Peter Jackson as a director, every since he made 'Bad Taste', which took him 4 years, I believe.
Any great film, has one main theme, you need to believe and care about the characters. Whether you have great special effects, acting or story twist, you need to feel something. This is where LOTR fails very badly.
The film started very well, I like the atmosphere and the style, and there was even some tension. If the film has ended when Liv Tyler rescued Elijah, then, although short, I would have liked it. From that point onwards the film became very tiresome. Basically any depth was lost, it became a sequel to 'Clash of the Titans' or any other Ray Harryhausen film. Lets just walk somewhere, have one of the Scottish Hobbit's do something stupid (which was very annoying by the way) and have to fight some monster or creature. This carried on for 2 hours. You realised at this point that no matter who or how many things attacked, this bunch could beat them all with relative ease, hence then, you didn't care anymore. The worst part was the end scene one bloody soldier against 50/60 men and they still couldn't kill him, just silly.
One other point, the 'Special FX', good FX are when you don't know that they are there, they mix seamlessly into the background, like the film.'A.I.' (crap film though). LOTR, had a lot of bad FX, they were obvious all the time, very few of the backgrounds actually looked real. The mines and the big creature looked particularly fake.
If I'm being cynical about the story, why didn't Gandalf just use the big bird to fly them or the ring over the mountain and drop it, but that wouldn't be a very long film I guess. How many times can someone drop or lose a ring, that is meant to be so important.
Judging by the comments here, a very overrated film, good at times, but generally childish and silly, I would recommend it to anyone under 14, for me 5/10. I suppose a lot of blame has to go the book, as essentially the story is a poor one.
BTW- Why is every new film on IMDB, `The greatest film ever made'