Beats the book!

Rating: 10/10 (3 January 2003)

This is probably a pretty controversial opinion but looking at some of the comments left for this film I'm surprised some of you people even bother to air your petty disagreements, so all's fair, I suppose.
First of all, a bit of background, as at least one other reviewer doesn't think this film is going to be enjoyed by "females". I'm quite happily female, from the UK, and read the books for the first time when I was 11 - more recently to get my memory up to speed too.
My problem with TTT - the book - was really that I always got bored in the middle and simply turned off. I'm a pretty intelligent person and avid reader (or so I'd like to think) but something about the middle-end of TTT always put me off. I was, therefore, a bit dubious about seeing the film.
However, I was delighted to watch this masterpiece from Peter Jackson. In my opinion this film is BETTER than FoTR - the amazing ratings for FoTR are mostly for the visuals and novelty which are obviously very similar in TTT. However this film is extremely gripping and fast paced, with moments of tension and surprise throughout, and EXTREMELY strong characterisation of the main players. I disagree with the opinions about Faramir and was delighted to see how closely he was played to Boromir with the difference showing in Faramir's decision, which did not happen earlier because he wasn't aware of Boromir's downfall - once he found that out, he laid his life forfeit. Good stuff. I also don't think that a few of the other characters in the film were portrayed as weakly as some people make out - did you really see the same film I did, or only what you wanted to believe?
One thing that pleased me most as a UKian was the accuracy of the characters' accents throughout. Gimli was Scottish sometimes and not at others, but other than that everything was spot on - especially all the characters' quaint habit of saying "can not" instead of "can't"!
TTT was spectacular, amazing, fantastic (in the fantasy sense of the word), epic, huge, beautiful, emotional and human. I was surprised when the interval came up and astonished that the end happened so quickly, and can't WAIT for the Return of the King to hit our screens!