Great Gollum, but the rest of the film was weak

Rating: 3/10 (23 December 2002)

I'll start with the best: the portrayal of Gollum and his interaction with Frodo and Sam was brilliant: better than the book! I'm still trying to figure out just what the Aragorn/Warg/Brego the wonder horse scene was suppose to contribute: it added no tension, nothing to the plot (other than asking us to believe Aragorn's horse, who now sports someone else's name, could wander down from the north and find Aragorn in his hour of need -- we might as well have been watching Free Willy), no excitement, and no character development. And then there was Farmir, who in the movie was nothing more than a pale shadow of Boromir. And again, for what purpose? And then the major plot hole, for which the bastardization of Farmir was apparently done to set up, where Frodo shows the one ring to the ringwraith, who then flies away because someone shot an arrow at it. Even if we are to swallow this lump of cinematic lard, there's now a little problem of Sauron now knowing WHO has the ring and WHERE it is, which is going to take some significant stretching of the plot to cover over in the Return of the King. The Fellowship of the Ring is one of my favorite movies. Unfortunately the Two Towers is a massive disappointment.