A Tour De Force in movies (from someone who has never read the books!)

Rating: 9/10 (26 December 2001)

Well, what can I say? I had heard so many mixed reviews from so many quarters before seeing this movie, that I was a little nervous. I mean, was I going to waste my hard earned cash, and "my precious" christmas vacation time spending close to three hours in a movie theatre? Well, the answer was no, it was certainly not a waste of money!
This is a review from someone who has never read any of the books - has actually attempted to, several times, but found them far too unappealing and much too much like hard work, yet I still was fascinated enough to want to see this movie.
I couldn't say if it is a faithful adaptation of the book - having seen the first Harry Potter movie (and knowing what was left out of that), I would say that it is unlikely that the director could fit everything in. But looking at "fellowship" as simply a movie, it is one of the rare classics that will be watched over and over again, and no doubt, we will all find additional parts that we missed the first time too.
Elijah Wood is exceptionally well cast as Frodo, as are the rest of the cast members - especially Viggo Mortensen, who puts just the right amount of regal bearing into his moves and actions to make you yearn for Part III to arrive, so we can see the Return of the King.
The scenery (very irrelevant to the plot and movie critique I know)was amazing, making me now want to visit New Zealand, and altogether I thought this was well worth a full price ticket.
My only "con", if you like, is the number of people who took children under the age of 5 into this film and my comment to all of you who are thinking of doing this in the future is PLEASE DON'T. For one thing, these children found the fight scenes and monsters very scary, for another they got bored, as they did not have the intellectual skills to follow the plot. And lastly on this point, if you can afford a frickin' movie ticket, then surely you can afford a baby sitter so that the rest of us poor theatre goers don't have to put up with your kids being in a pain in the.....THIS MOVIE IS NOT FOR YOUNG CHILDREN!
Go and see this movie once, just to say you went, a second time, to get all the plot points, and a third time just for the hell of it.
Roll on next year and Book II of the Lord of the Rings trilogy - an outstanding movie to end the year with!