a war flick that outstays its welcome

Rating: 4/10 (29 January 2006)

Quite clearly, this must be the most overrated film of all time. Right, if you are into special effects and fancy dresses, you get treated to some eye candy, but does this really justify three hours of nearly plot less costume drama. Halfway through the film it struck me that this is nothing more than some kind of violent war movie. Basically you get extremely tiring and brutal battle scenes that alternate with extremely tiring and boring dialog (usually one of the participants is dying, which makes communication a tad tedious). While 'Fellowship of the Ring' still had some humorous elements and a bit of a storyline, the third part comes across as a show reel for what computer animation can do today. But even that is not fully convincing. That little mutant that guides Frodo and his mate up the mountain remains a virtual character through most of his movements. As all the prime movers have already been established, the carnage starts annoyingly early. But hey, why bother at all with giving the cast some depth? As all the good guys are very cute, noble, good looking and dashing and all the bad ones are extremely ugly, mean, evil and nasty, every protagonist remains positively one dimensional. The condemnable moral being that ugly beings can't be nice. Well, being hardly a handsome object myself, I take offense to that. But what I really object to is the glorification of violence that is present throughout those excruciating 192 minutes, combined with unbearably stagy dialog to justify it. Hey, killing can be great fun. Though to give the director his due, this might not be Jackson's fault, but Tolkien's. However, no reason to like this monstrosity any better. Maybe I'm just a bit old fashioned but everything I like about films, i.e. great acting, an intricate script, an unpredictable plot, imaginative camera-work and clever editing is conspicuously absent here. I liked the fight with the giant spider though. Only for escapists.