Gollum has the voice of a muppet?!

Rating: 1/10 (18 October 2004)

First the good things. This people who made this movie really tried and put effort into what they were doing. They get an A for effort. Maybe they tried too hard...
The good things about this movie come from the book. The story, the inspiration, every good line, every good "scene."
What the movie brings to this story is not good.
It manages to make each chapter into a long drawn out mess. It's tiring to watch a super close up of "some heroic figure" speak a overly dramatic line delivered in some pseudo-Shakespearean delivery again and again.
Watching Elijah Wood furrow his eyebrows for 2 hours almost drove me insane. Aragorn and his "accent" were ... (to avoid exaggeration) pretty annoying. Thanks to Liv Tyler for some super uninteresting words, whatever they were, something about love, and forever, yada yada yada. That being said, Boromir and a few others had some memorable lines.
What passes for action is hyperbolic CGI, silly costumes (I loved seeing goblins prance around like Broadway dancers), and Kung-Fu, Blockbuster style action scenes (If you have scene any movie with swords, and/or fighting in it, then you've seen this before).
If you like MTV, video games, or crack, you will like this movie. It is a triumph of using good books as an ingredient in the big movie formula. You can rent this and Spiderman 2 all in the same day, then go download some Britney Spears pictures. All entertaining, for about 5 minutes.
If you are over 16, or you are looking for something interesting, or new... pass this by.