An Orgy of Ugliness, Death, and Destruction

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2004)

As you can no doubt surmise, I was not very taken with the (hopefully) last of J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy. Although I was extremely impressed with the special effects, the story itself was as tedious as reading the book. I wasn't terribly impressed with the idea of the diminutive Hobbit heroes, Frodo (Elijah Wood), a sweet, gentle dwarf and his flabby sidekick Sam (Sean Astin), from some yah-yah land called Hobbiton, traipsing across the geography while risking life and limb so that he could ultimately drop an evil ring into an erupting volcano while wholesale death and destruction rage on nearby. It seems that the film was primarily interested in exposing the violence-hungry audiences of the world with as much death, suffering, ugliness, and gore as they could cram into their painfully long (3 ½ hours) cinematic colossus.
It is easy to cheer the slaughter of the adversaries since most of them were masterpieces of ugliness, decay, and disease. Some of the evil crowd depicted an orthodontist's fantasy come true with teeming examples of really bad dental decay and deformity exploited at every opportunity. To compound the repulsiveness, director Peter Jackson must have scoured the dermatology handbook for examples to create puffed out, discolored, and distorted skin tissue; lesions, cancerous oozings, and other disgusting aberrations. Of course, there were also the obligatory humpbacks or other physical anomalies to add to your visual distress so that when the heroic saviors sliced and diced them by hundreds you would not feel so bad.
One cannot help but admire Gandolf (Ian McKellen), the wise wizard with his flowing white beard. He is not only all knowing, omnipotent, and full of convenient magic when it suits him, but for a guy in his sixties he rides like a cowboy stuntman and brandishes his sword in battle like a twenty-something. Since this is all a fantasy, why not do something far-fetched now and then?
The good guys in this piece of prolonged carnage are extra nice and the female love objects like Arwen (Liv Taylor), are truly heavenly to look at. Frodo and Sam look like they would be terrified to walk around in downtown Carmel, let alone to take on the hideous lineup that seem to lurk behind every bush. Why they put up with the whims of the numskulls who insist on slaughtering the entire leper colony entourage is beyond my comprehension.
If you see this movie just to enjoy the special effects, it is well worth the price of admission. However, if you want to see a good film, well that is another matter entirely. If you enjoy lots of blood and destruction, this piece is for you. There is enough carnage in this flick to make war films like `Saving Private Ryan' or `War and Piece' seem like a walk in the park. It is one helluva commentary on the American public who seem to enjoy a lot more violence than they are willing to admit. It is hardly a wonder that Americans so easily rallied to Bush's deceptive war cries when the Nation ostensibly professes to be such a peace-loving people.