Sophomoric drivel with excellent special effects

Rating: 2/10 (31 August 2003)

Though I didn't enjoy the first of the Lord of the Rings films, I was eager to see the second, because the reviews were so terrific. I was terribly disappointed. I'd never read the Tolkien books--maybe that would have helped, I dunno. I do know that I found the plot hard to follow at times, and some of the dialog was hard to understand. But what really bothered me most was how cliche-ridden the film was--characters giving each other meaningful looks out of a grade Z flick, characters whose good or evil qualities screamed out at you, music that was laughably heavy handed, etc. For me, there were only two strong points: the battle scenes gave an unusually good sense of what combat was like long ago, and the special effects were impressive, especially the computer-enhanced character of Smeagol.