Oh, could there have been a better movie? Not by much!

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2005)

This is, for those living under a rock for the past 4 years, the first installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. For me, it is a solid beginning. I don't know how many more times I can say this, but this is not necessarily a canon reproduction of the movies. It is an adaptation from the books, so some people might find their favorite pages or text removed or perhaps a few extra ones added, but that did not stop me from loving it! Again, I've said this for all the Lord of the Rings movies, production qualities are oh the highest value here. Not many movies have ever gone to the same expense these movies have. Visual effects are amazing, miniatures have impressive amounts of detail, the score is possibly the best in movie history, etc.... If you want to see more of my commentary on the production values, I go into more depth on my Return of the King review.
So with that out of the way, this is definitely the second best Lord of the Rings movie, with RotK being the top. It has many meaning full moments at the end, including Gandalf's falling from Moria, Boromir's tragic death to save Merry and Pippin, Sam refusing to let Frodo go off alone, the last three members of the fellowship deciding that they can not let Merry and Pip die, the ending is the strongest part.
With that, the beginning is the second strongest. It starts out with the history of the Ring, Isildur's cutting it of Sauron, him refusing to destroy it, Gollum finding it, Bilbo stealing it, and then we are here at Biblo's 111st Birday (and also Frodo's also, but we don't need to go into that!) Frodo then learns of the ring from Gandalf, and sets out on his second longest trip outside the Shire ever with Samwise and later Meriadoc and Peregrin by his side. He meets the seedy Strider who is untrusting at first but leads the hobbits safely to Rivendell after a dangerous stop at Weathertop that scars Frodo for life.
The middle is probably the worst part, but that does not speak highly enough of it! There is a lot of lengthy dialauge, especially in Revendell (I guess even after condensing it, 30+ pages of text is still a lot to cover!), but the Journey quickly continues when the ring moves south and Saruman tries to thwart them. The journey into Moria is very action packed and contains one of (in my opinion) the greatest pieces of film music ever, "The Bridge of Kazah-dum".
It is over all the best movie of 2001 in my opinion, and I think almost everyone, who doesn't HATE fantasy will find something good about it.