Best Picture of the Year? Give me a break..

Rating: 7/10 (30 May 2004)

Man, and you thought Titanic was cheesy?! When I first saw this film on the big screen, the multiple endings bothered me only a little. Now that I saw it for the second time, they simply outraged me. Best adapted screenplay, best director and best picture of the year all went this way. This time: not deserved. The Return of the King ends five times. FIVE TIMES!! I don't give a good goddamn if it was that way in the books too. I never read them. And that gives me a good position to rate this as a film and not a screen adaptation.
Every single time Elijah Wood laughs in this movie (in the entire trilogy actually), I almost throw up. Couldn't they make it any more cheesier?! Especially stomach turning is the scene at the end of the RotK, where they all laugh and hug by Frodo's bed. OF COURSE in slow motion to add a little more sappiness. Plus the scene where their journey has ended and they all sit in the pub and skål their pints together.. check out the expression on Wood's face. So cheesy I laughed my a** off.
The most worrying thing about all of this is that without the cheesiness and the multiple endings, this would've really been a great movie. I don't love them, but I do like these films. And it was such a tasteless display of drama from the academy to pretty much dismiss the two previous movies and award the last and most tasteless one in spades. It made the whole thing feel like the "Russell Crowe-syndrome", as I like to call it. They didn't award him the statue for The Insider, but instead for Gladiator the next year, because they probably felt so guilty. Maximus after all was clearly a more easier role than Wigand and didn't deserve the award as much.
I can see why so many love this film and embrace it, but people, eleven Oscars? No.
** / *****