Superheroes bully large numbers of courageous bad guys

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 2002)

Well I loved it, best film of the year for me (it hasnt been a great year, mind) but definetly flawed...the good points of the film have been mentioned extensively in the preceeding reviews, so Ill just get a bit nit-picky, if thats alright. Theres a few SPOILERS here and there, but come on, youve seen it already.
It seems bloody long...seems longer than FOTR, i think because so much goes on, its exhausting. Plus the editing is a bit mad. I would have much preferred to see less of treebeard meandering around mumbling and more of M + P in the hands of the sarf london orcs.
Helms deep... after all the hype. I heard a lot about it before i saw it, heard comparisons to gladiator and Braveheart...rubbish. I found it tedious, and for one reason. THERE IS NO DANGER. Our heroes are utterly invulnerable. They wave their weapons and a dozen uruk-hai are stuck dead immediately. Haldir buys the farm...well, excuse me while i roll sobbing into a grief stricken ball. Hes a bloody extra with about 4 lines of dialogue (over two films!) There is no loss...no sense of menace...I was horrified to hear the "counting game" from the book was included...pass the sick bag vicar. Legolas and gimli might as well have whipped out their respective Elf and dwarf-hoods and started measuring...
"Hah, what say you to that, master elf? See? three and a half, no, three and three quarter inches!"
"Alas, good gimli...behold...Five inches, forsooth."
"(grumble)well...tis cold..."
Its utterly crass. And this isnt a issue of suspension of disbelief either. When the heroes are going through the motions - parry-kill, parry-kill, fancy move, parry-kill, surf down steps -ITS NOT EXCITING. ITS...VERY...BORING. You might as well watch arnie in "Commando". By the time the battle was half way over i was actively rooting for the uruk-hai.
And as for the end...the heroes on horseback charging through the swarms of orcs like a vaguely inconvenient black fog, the rohirrim charging downhill onto a forest of spears (wouldnt that have resulted in about 2,000 horse kebabs? Or did Gandalf turn all the spears to rubber?) Even my 10 year old nephew thought the end was "dumb".
Shouldnt the second film in a trilogy like this end of a note of despair, loss, tragedy? I just wish PJ gone the whole hog and thinned out the overlarge cast a bit more. Killing off Eomer and legolas at helms deep would have impressed. And if i were PJ, i wouldnt worry about upsetting the hardcore tolkien fans either...theyll always be moaning about something.