Lord of the most overrated...

Rating: 1/10 (26 March 2013)

Actually, correction- nearly the most overrated. The 3rd installment clearly holds that title due to its baffling best picture win. But Part 2 is just as awful. Coming from a sci-fi and fantasy fan, I take no pride in my distaste for this movie franchise. And Part 1 was at least "watchable". But Part 2 almost succeeded with me walking out of the theatre from boredom. I can state the positive aspects easily- the film has wonderful scenery and special effects. So, if that is the limit of your appreciation of films, then you will love the movie. But all that is left is disappointment and painful boredom. Let's begin with the bad acting- everyone overacts, looking too serious at the wrong times and to whimsical and emotional at equally wrong times. The movie and the director makes the assumption that the audience immediately empathizes with the characters in the movie, without proper build/development. It is quite presumptuous of the director to think that most people are as in love with these characters as he is and the loyal fans of the books. Next, there are way too many close-ups on the faces and eyes of everyone, showing every pimple and every gray hair... do we need this? This also goes double for the orks and bad guys- how disgusting do they have to be? Way overkill- the director tries too hard to exaggerate the grossness. These close-ups are made more painful from the slowness of the filming, which is 3x longer than normal movies- it is like each expression is in slow motion. Combine this with tortuously long dialogue- each character carries on forever it seems expressing thoughts that are "force-fit" into Shakespearean prose. This makes the film incredibly ponderous and worsens the overacting. Some further points of disgust for me is the time and focus on the hobbits and making them out to be such a vital part of the good guys winning- newsflash, they are all completely useless and trouble-making and it's annoying and humiliating to have them all play such important roles. Other things that bugged me bigtime is the fact that Gandolf exhibits little or no sorcery or magic in all 3 films! All he does is make speeches and talk in a deep voice and use his staff as a sword- what is so powerful about him? Yawn. Another stupid aspect is the ratio of bad guys to good guys during the battles- it's like 100 to 1. And the bad guys each look 10x bigger and stronger, yet are felled by a single arrow in the shoulder? Please. The worse thing of the 2nd and 3rd films is the introduction of the special effects Gollum creature, whose irritating raspy monologues occupies a large portion of both films- I felt incredibly stupid paying attention to this computer animated creature whine and eat fish. Finally, the whole trilogy is about a silly ring which is utterly ridiculous and especially difficult for the audience to believe as so important and earth shattering. And as others have pointed out, the ring (and hobbit) could have been easily flown via Gandolf's winged creatures to the fire pit in an hour and avoided all the battles and quests and pointlessness. To any who not seen the film- avoid this slow-moving yawn fest at all costs.