A lot of effort, but little reward.

Rating: 1/10 (7 February 2003)

Very similar feeling to the first film. Certainly everyone can admire the effort and hard work that must have gone into making these three films. I have never read the books and probably never will, so I can't comment on whether the original material was worthy of praise, but as films, they are poor.
I can only assume, by the large amount of hysterical praise both films have received, that people decide before even watching the film, that it is great or that audiences just wish to see special FX.
Just like the first movie, there's lots of little sub plots going on, but for what reason, none of the external characters seem to have any purpose or add anything to the story. The complete mess of a story is virtually non-existent and by the end you realise after all the pompous procrastination you have a very simple battle sequence. What were the first 2 hours about ?
The biggest crime of this film is that you don't care about any of the characters, nothing is explained really, none of the motivations of any of the characters seem genuine. In the end, you see that the main cast of characters basically are invincible, so who cares, they're going to win, there is no tension, no edge.
The FX, which seems to be the main reason everyone is watching the film, range from very good to very average. The laughable tree sequences never really look real or believable. Parts of the battle sequence were comedic, they were so over-the-top.
The bottom line is really if people were more honest and looked at this film or it predecessor without pre-judging it as a book conversion, they would see that although there's lots of FX and lot's of things going on, the film is a muddled mess and not really worthy of such high praise.