a good film ... though it does have problems

Rating: 7/10 (20 December 2003)

This was a good film, fully worth the ticket price ... but this is not the 'greatest film ever made' as some folks would claim. Visually this film is stunning with some classic scenes that will be permanently burned into your consciousness. The performances for the most part are solid and the when there's action it doesn't disappoint.
But there are problems....
The scenes between Frodo and Sam are painfully sentimental and effeminate with an obvious homosexual undercurrent. Any momentum built up in the preceding scenes comes crashing to a halt when these two are on screen leaving the viewer more than a little creeped out.
The movie is way too long. They could have trimmed an almost an hour out of this. There's lots of scenes that really didn't contribute to the plot or character development. There a good number of slow motion scenes that resembled shampoo commercials ... lots of strutting about with breezy, flowing locks. The whole Faromir and his crazy dad business really didn't amount to much ... didn't we see this 'insane king' scenario in the 2nd movie? There's way too many 3rd rate motivational battle speeches and the singing scenes were just weird and out of place.
The big battle scene looked great but wasn't completely satisfying. What was the point of all of the heroics and sacrifice of the armies of men if the invincible ghost army was just going to show up and clean house? The ghost idea was cool but they should have portrayed them to be less invincible so that the preceding battle wouldn't be rendered so insignificant.
But despite these flaws this is still a very good film. Finally the D&D genre adventure film has been treated with the respect it deserves. LOTR has done for swords and sorcery what the original Star Wars trilogy did for space adventure films. I hope there'll more great films in this genre ... perhaps 'The Crystal Shard'?
7/10