Tolkein is Hobbit-forming.....

Rating: 10/10 (9 November 2002)

It has been said that if, as a fourteen-year-old boy, you don't think The Lord Of The Rings is the best book ever written, there is something wrong with you. And if, as an adult, you still think The Lord Of The Rings is the best book ever written, there is something wrong with you too. This film remedies some of the worst faults of the book (like the implausible and interminable tale of Tom Bombadil) whilst adding few of its own.
There are really two marvellous things about this work: first, that it makes accessible a story which is, to be charitable, demanding of its reader; and second, that it allows itself the time (three long films) to do the book justice.
The result is a film which is more measured in its pace, and which takes more trouble to develop its characters, than the formulaic Hollywood studio products with which we have normally to content ourselves as viewers. Oh, and you can safely take your mother to see it: there is, for once, no gratuitous sex, no bad language, and no overplayed gore - and for that alone I would rank it in the top ten films of recent years.