Almost follows the star wars trilogy: two winners and a dog to finish

Rating: 3/10 (25 August 2006)

All I can say is this: I have watched Fellowship about 100 times, Two towers about 40 times and Return of the King 3 times. And I'd say that the number of times I've watched them is directly proportional to how I regard each film.
Before I discuss the film itself, let me start by saying that I'm not one of those who dis's this (and all the other LOTR movies) simply because they don't follow verbatim those the horribly written, over-baked novels. To those who think this way, I have this to say: I noticed that JRR seems to have lost patience with writing this trilogy towards the end. You'll notice that fellowship is neat and punchy and two towers is engaging, but drops off in parts. By the time JRR was writing RotK, he must have been absolutely fed up with the whole LOTR because the syntax and language is rough, awkward, rushed in parts; and the author's own interest in winding up the story in style is visibly lacking.
My criticism of the film itself is more reserved for the fact that the film-makers clearly attempted to hoodwink the population into thinking that this was a grand epic. Post production was over way the top and many elements were far too sentimental and over-dramatic (epic cinematic devices). If they wanted to create a truly great epic, they should have looked at films like Dances with Wolves where the powerful score, grand-standing and sentimentality work seamlessly with the story. For some reason, I felt that this film had all the elements of an epic.... but it just wasn't one. Perhaps the underlying novel didn't give them enough to work with. In any case, it really doesn't rank highly in my humble opinion. Fellowship was, without a doubt, the best of this series. How RotK ended up with all the awards and praise, both here and from the critics, has me absolutely stumped!
Sometimes, I get the feeling that everyone was waiting for the final chapter before showering with awards and praise ... and when they finally saw it and realised that it wasn't as great as they had hoped, they were either sucked in by the epic devices (as opposed to an epic MOVIE) or they felt obliged to simply reward it notwithstanding because they had held off their showering of praise on the first two and felt obliged to give one of them all the accolades simply out of respect for their dedication in executing a task this size. Yet... the final product is unsatisfactory.