Surprisingly good - Spoilers

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2003)

After two high-quality movies, I feared the worst for this one. Being the conclusion of the series, it is perhaps the most difficult one to bring into the theater. My fears were unfounded, however: Jackson did a good job.
Camera work is excellent, effects range from good to stunning-- and the narration also survives. If you accept that it is simply impossible to do an adaption of the books without changes, the changes Jackson did do become almost unimportant. The spirit is what's important-- and the spirit of the books survives once again. The actors also deliver (again) very good performance (with the notable exception of Wood: Pinocchio would have been a better actor than he), with Andy Serkins ("Gollum") being one of the best. I did not feel bored at all for most of the movie. Ok, the ending could have been a trifle shorter, but you can't have everything I guess.

One point of criticism survives: Jacksons almost-fatal love for too-solemn, slow-motion death (and pseudo-death) scenes. Frodo being stung by Kankra is simply a repetition of the cave troll scene in part one (with exactly the same facial expression Wood is so very good at...) and is the one point in the movie that was really, really boring and bad. In this respect, the scene falls in the same category as Aragorn's almost-death in part two. Well, thankfully 15 seconds cannot ruin over 3 hours of good movie. As I said, you cannot have everything.