Overrated...

Rating: 3/10 (9 March 2003)

I loved the Fellowship of the Ring and was greatly anticipating this film. This film however did not have nearly the same wow effect as the first movie. Effects in this movie are defenitly top notch and it makes the movie worth seeing just for the huge scale of the battles but other than that I thought this movie had far less substance. The best part of the movie is Golem, he is spectacular and who can't love him? Unfortunately he was the only character in this movie I found myself caring about. About all you get from Gimliy and Legalos are a BOMBARDMENT of simply awful jokes. Going alongside the wall at helms deep WAS humorous when you come by Gimliy not being able to see over the wall, yet like all the good humor in this movie they immediately destroy the joke by over doing it, "Shall I fetch you a box." No thanks Mr. Elf I would prefer a mute button. Going back to Gimliy again, I found it very annoying that Treebeard's voice was done by the same actor, this however wont bother most of you... hopefully. The battles for the most part are epic and truelly spectacular, yet they throw in many scenes that make me cringe and want to look away, also in this movie I had trouble believing in "the reality of the movie". Examples include... - Legolas was taking out the Orcs and there ride (large beast creatures) with one arrow a piece... they were moving... really fast, This I am fine with but when he get's off two shots at the Orc with the torch resembling a character from The Road Warrior and doesn't put him down... something is wrong. This is also the same character that said when the Orcs were a rather far distance from Helmsdeep to aim for there Necks and Underarms. This brings me to my next and biggest complaint with our elf friend. - Legalos told them to shoot at the Necks etc. because that is where there armor is the weakest. Well there armor does absolutely nothing against shields tossed with feet. The scene that I am talking about where Legolas slides down the stairs is so awfull I don't want to see the movie again if I have to watch that. I was fine with all of legolas' other little tricks but this is completely stupid. It truelly takes away a lot of the serious atmosphere this battle had and turned it into trash. These people are defending there families and I can't take that seriously when I have elf man sliding away. - The central Characters are far to powerfull in this movie. When Aragorn and Gimliy can cover the bridge swarming with orcs by themselves something 30 some people couldn't do it's hard to accept -When the men who capture Frodo and Sam kill the back half of that large army of men, why did the front half completely ignore what was going on? -And finally... there is no was I can believe that not a single person wasn't able to spot either Sam or Frodo when they were at the Gates of Mordor. There little cloaks were not enough to have shielded them from sight and sound with how much running around they did around there.
I suggest when you see this movie you simply accept all of its oddness and not "nitpick" like me. I do think the movie is GOOD but it is far from great and IMHO not worthy of a Best Picture nomination.