Not Star Wars, not Indiana Jones just another dull adaption

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2001)

First of all I never read the book, nor will I ever, nor do I ever want to. But I think this movie was meant to appeal to more than just the book's readership. And I was really looking forward to the film. I'm a great admirer of Peter Jackson -- his "Heavenly Creatures" is brilliant, and I like the way that the trilogy was filmed simultaneously, with each installment to be released on consecutive Christmases, instead of waiting two years like we did for Star Wars. But this movie is bad, bad because its ambitions are for a lot more than it delivers, and I can't understand the raves its getting.
The casting is excellent -- but why bother getting excellent actors like Ian Holm, Ian McKellan, and Cate Blanchett when their acting prowess is just going to be over-shadowed by special effects. Every time they were tempted by the ring's evil power rather than letting the actors show greed and ambition through expressions and gestures which would have been subtle, scary and help build suspense a weird special effect happened. There was very little character development -- I could barely tell the two humanoids in the fellowship apart so alike were they in appearance and so little time was spent delineating their personalities. I learned nothing about the Aryan archer (except that orcs like to line up single file when he has his arrow cocked) or the gorilla elf. Former soap opera stars like Mark Hamill may as well have been cast, not Shakespearean actors.
The script didn't have the same amount of cringe-inducing lines like "Titanic" but at least "Titanic" had some moments when you were actually moved. At no point in this movie did I actually feel for these characters (perhaps when Frodo lamented that he wished the ring never came to him -- I hope this happened 'cause I can't really remember anymore so forgettable was the picture). But the characters just seemed to move from one battle scene to the next which may have been thrilling at first but eventually grew tiring. Also there was very little humour (maybe the twin hobbits or the hairy elf was supposed to make us laugh, but it was lost on the audience I saw the film with). I can only remember one scene (concerning Samwise) that the whole audience burst out laughing. If you think back, Star Wars is very funny and light-hearted. The effeminate C-3PO and R2D2, the boyish and overly solemn Luke Skywalker, and the sly, sexy Han Solo and bickering Princess Leia had a spirit that just carried us in their fight against the Empire. The quest of the fellowship just seems heavy and unnecessarily solemn.
The battle scenes were sorely lacking in drama. Part of what makes a good fight is the fear factor. But how can you feel fear when four dopey hobbits who can barely tie their shoes together and seem like they need to be carried everywhere, plus five guys who can actually fight can take on army after army without a single casualty?
Though it may seem sacrilege to say this, I think Peter Jackson was in over his head. I still feel he's very talented, and am anxious to see what he'll do next but I think he jumped too soon in taking on a project of this scale. I kept wishing someone like Ang Lee, James Cameron, Tim Burton, or Steven Spielberg had directed this. I'm not saying that the movie didn't contain genuine thrills, and I liked the darker tone. But he needs to know how to film the simplest scene between two actors without turning his camera into an obtrusive neighbour. He needs to learn how to give weight and gravity to a scene without hideously Wagneresque (and I love Wagner) music accompanying every footstep. I wish Peter Jackson had cut out about a quarter of the fights (no one would have noticed) and just made the movie shorter or spent more time telling us who each of these guys were. I wish he would have come up with a title sequence and yeah, that ending was a cop-out (and I don't care if it's like that in the book). The way it was portrayed it just looked as though he ran out of film.