Jackson tries to do too much here

Rating: 5/10 (7 May 2016)

I must admit that I did enjoy the first film and although it perhaps was a little slow in setting up the story it still remains a fairly compelling watch overall. Sadly I didn't get that same feeling when watching this second instalment for the following reasons...
Firstly, splitting all of the characters up and trying to show the story from various different perspectives is a risky strategy. If it's done wrong then it can make the film feel unfocused and not particularly interesting and sadly this second instalment falls into this very trap.
The film flits about from character to character, story arc to story arc without giving any particular character or story arc chance to develop or grow properly. It doesn't help that sometimes there can be long gaps from one story arc to another meaning that you may have forgotten what was going on in the previous story arc? I got the feeling that Jackson was trying to weave the stories together, but it seems that this isn't one of his strengths.
The second thing that bothered me slightly about this film was the character of Gollum - for some reason I felt that we were being teased in the first film that he was an interesting character that's shrouded in mystery. Whilst his character is fun for a bit, his repetitive rantings and antics do start to grate after a while.
I was also disappointed that Gandalf and Saruman weren't given much screen time here - the former seemed to just drift in and out of the story and the latter was only really featured towards the end. Although their absences were perhaps necessary to the story I found them to be the most compelling characters and was a bit annoyed that they both weren't in the film more often.
The final battle sequences are nicely staged and once again the performances from the principal cast were excellent - Bernard Hill's superb performance helped the film greatly when McKellen and Lee weren't on screen. John Rhys Davies also provided some excellent comic relief which again helped to improve my overall opinion of this film.
The Two Towers is still a worthy film that's relatively enjoyable, but I just felt that by splitting the characters up and in establishing separate story arcs that it felt a little disjointed and lacked the smooth and more simplistic flowing of the story in the first film.