Too big for its own good.

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2003)

If you have read the book, it's almost impossible to judge this as a movie that can work on its own; it's too tempting to comment on it according to whether it is a visual version of the novel in your mind or not. But that is not the point.
The Return of the King has three distinct aspects that differ greatly in quality. There are the action scenes and the spectacular look of the film; the script, the plot, and the editing; and then there is the emotional relationships between the characters.
The visual aspect and the action scenes are faultless. Battles with lots of different weapons, Nazgul screeching, a reasonable amount of blood, hideous Orcs, oliphaunts, you name it, it's there. But it's never too gorey, or so fast that it's confusing to follow.
How-the-story-gets-told is a bit less perfect. There are a few flashbacks that seem completely pointless to the overall film (because nobody really needs to see those scenes to understand anything that happens later) and a few useless flash-forwards (because there was no need to anticipate what's in them). Moreover, the way the movie jumps from scenery to scenery (trying to tell what is happening in three places at the same time) does not flow as well as it did in The Two Towers.
The worse element in the film is probably the emotive one. The actors are very intense (to the point of overacting on occasion), and their lines are sometimes better, sometimes worse. But the problem with all the emotional scenes is that they are too similar: the external world turns down the volume and moves in slow motion and the characters look at each other in the eye with devotion and desperation. It does not matter if they are two teenage friends or two lovers or an (adoptive) father and daughter, if it is a moment of triumph or of mourning.
I will probably change my mind if I see the movie again, but overall it seems too irregular.