Poorly scripted, painful to watch and quite a letdown

Rating: Null/10 (26 April 2003)

I'll keep my comments short and sweet:
1) Terrible dialouge. I lost count of how many times I cringed as lines were spewed forth. See the King of Rohan and the burial mound scene.
2) One dimensional characters. See Gimli's painful and never ending "jokes." Jar Jar Binks was given better material and more dignity.
3) Schizo order of the scenes. The best example of this mistake takes place during the final battle at Helms Deep. Highly intense moments of fighting would suddenly shift away to Merry and Pippin. Disconcerting and as it was done throughout the film, the pacing was tarnished.
4) Plot holes. One glaringly obvious one was when Frodo almost gives up the ring to a Nazgrul and THEN Faramir, who up till then had had the hobbits in chains, lets them go. That and the many others lead one to wonder where the script supervisor was.
5) While a bit harder to point out, this film didn't seem to have any "magic." It seemed flat,coarse and underwhelming. For example one thing I rememember while watching "Fellowship" was not wanting the film to end as it was so enthralling. In TT I couldn't wait for the film to FINISH!
To sum up, if you're still in Jr. High I'm sure this film will fit your view as being "the best movie of all time" as previous comments have indicated. For the rest of us however this film was pretty wretched. Note - I'm quite a big fan of JR.R. Tolkein's works so my distaste for TT was not due to ignorance. At the same time let me remark that I had no problem with the foreknowledge that a film of the LOTR would necessitate some changes from the books. My criticisms are focused on how shoddily done the film itself was.