Tokien's spirit has been exorcised from his story like Saruman from Theodin in the film.

Rating: 1/10 (22 December 2002)

I didn't realize when I watched Fellowship of the Ring exactly to what degree the whole "men are weak" modification would snowball out of control. Faramir is the latest sad casualty to this overall change to the original story.
Also the Ents could have been better handled.
I could go on with this line of criticism but why bother. If you haven't read the books (heck, even if you have...) and believe that the Lord of the Rings is your typical superficial, without a shred of subtelty Good vs. Evil story and that the upshot is that some short people need to throw a ring in a volcano, and that entertains you, then you may enjoy this film.
If your looking for something more transcendent you will be disappointed. The screenwriters, which ones I don't know, have done a poor job of translating Tolkien to the screen (and no, capturing Tolkien's spirit is difficult but not impossible in a movie so don't throw out that straw man), and contrary to what Peter Jackson stated on the special edition DVD of FoTR, they have not stayed as close to the original story as possible and HAVE thrown their own spin in. Why aren't they more up-front about this?
Oh well.