Short people return jewellery to rightful owner.

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2003)

I must say openly at the outset of this review that I have attempted to read the story several times and have always found it stodgy and impenetrable. I suppose one either has affinity for Dark-Ages style sword-boilers, or one does not. For fantasy I prefer the multi-layered mysticism of C.S. Lewis and for sci-fi the brightly-coloured hyper-detail of Frank Herbert. So saying that The Two Towers is tedious, portentous and doesn't amount to very much in its volume of narrative is like a non-Wagner fan sitting through all sixteen hours of The (other) Ring and complaining that nothing much really happens.
So, I'll exasperate all the Tolkien acolytes here by saying that overall the story is reasonably well-paced and engrossing enough for the non-fanatics to enjoy. Costumes, sets and art direction are all excellent and Viggo Mortensen makes a charismatic lead. Also a constant source of delight is the octogenarian Christopher Lee doing his best Osama impression, raging impotently from his bedroom at the destruction of Isengard like an imam being woken early on a Sunday morning by a leaf-blower. The character of Gollum also is destined to be one of the movies' unforgettable, classic creations - his mental torment so beautifully conveyed, the conflict of greed and loyalty so clearly defined, he appears like a psychotic, hallucinating version of Yoda. The film comes alive every second Gollum appears on the screen
To the negative aspects. As I said at the outset, not a lot happens over the course of three hours. The hobbits go on walking, our heroes appear on endless helicopter shots running or riding, and there's a battle at the end. That's it. Characters are already established so no further exposition is needed, but what we get is an awful lot of (sometimes exquisitely lovely) padding. I know this is a Celtic-style fantasy, but why does the dialogue have to be so heavy, slow and mock-Shakespearian? Surely Tolkien didn't originally write all this stuff? He did, you say? Geez! I'm sure to the reverential Tolkien-ites the characters drip pearls from their very lips each time they open them, but to me it all sounded rather like a po-faced version of Conan the Barbarian, minus the humour. Howard Shore's music also struck this reviewer as rather pedestrian and missing the required Wagnerian touch, and not enough (nearly enough!) of the delectable Liv Tyler.
All-in-all, a bum-numbing haul along the road of synthetic lyricism, with seemingly more emphasis placed on not alienating Tolkien fans than on attracting new ones. I can guess the next one - the short people give the ring back and good triumphs over evil, right? I hope that doesn't spoil it for anybody..