OK feature, though not without it's problems.

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2002)

First off, let me say that I'm not a die-hard LOTR person. I've never read Tolkein's books and basically thought that the first feature was at best OK. So this review will be from a movie fan's point of view rather than a hard-core Tolkein fan.
Frankly, I did find this to be a little more involving than `Fellowship'. It had some truly wonderful visuals, (it should win the Oscars for those) and though I'm not a fan of CGI, Gollum is one of the better digital creatures to come out of the movies.
Still, I did have some problems with the picture. First off, many have said that the characters are all well developed. Well, I didn't see it that way. For me, any character development really took a back seat to the special effects. Sometimes that's not a bad thing, if handled correctly. (Ray Harryhausen's movies are a good example of that). But when people start saying that these guys should be nominated for Academy Awards, oh come on now! Frankly, the most interesting character by far was Gollum and he was a digital creation!
Secondly, like the first feature, `Towers' has it's moments where it really drags, especially during the middle. Peter Jackson, I think, kept cutting in an out of the many different stories this movie had and as a result some of the focus was lost.
The final battle scene was spectacular, but then again, Jackson makes the cardinal sin of running it too long, and as result a lot of the intensity is gone. One of the professional reviewers said that not since Akira Kurosawa, have we seen any battle of this magnitude. Well, speaking for myself, this battle comes no where near Kurosawa's fighting scenes. Kurosawa's battle scenes were always wonderfully intense from beginning to end. (And he didn't need digital fighting characters).
If I were rating this movie film solely on its special effects, I'd give it 3 ½ stars. But when the whole movie is added in, I'd have to give it 2 ½ stars. Just like the first feature, `Towers' is an OK movie, but because of the character Gollum, I found it a little bit more entertaining.
Anyway that's my take on this film. It's funny how people view things differently. Many hard-core fans view these two Lord of the Rings features as the greatest all-time cinematic masterpieces in film history, (which is perfectly fine) while I myself only found them mildly entertaining.