Presumptuous (*spoilers*)

Rating: 5/10 (23 December 2002)

I am a huge fan of the first film in this series, yet I felt that this
movie simply took itself for granted. Yes, the special effects were
nifty, although I was underwhelmed by Golem, and the sound
effects were far less inventive than in the first installment.
The dialogue was painfully hokey: there are far too many instances
of people taking the most inappropriate time to utter some
medieval-movie cliche (10,000 orcs descending upon you and the
king whispers, "So it begins" ?!). There are lots of sweeping zoom
shots on our heroes, yet they don't do anything really heroic!
Frodo's story is dull, and Sam turns into a cheap speechmaker.
Golem is an awful little ball of bipolar disorder. Legolas and the
dwarf (name escapes me) spend too much time spewing out
cheap backslappy lines, and not enough time letting the audience
understand the danger they're in.
The first movie demonstrated that it is possible to stray very far
from a book and still make a terrific movie. This one strayed just
as far from its source and really turned out quite bad. It really feels
like they turned over the screenwriting duties to a pimply-faced
15-year-old Star Trek fan. Don't believe the hype!