Eight bucks will buy a lot of stock

Rating: Null/10 (18 December 2002)

I saw Lord of the Rings-Two Towers this morning at 12:01 a.m. Eight bucks, three hours, first showing.
The magic of Fellowship was missing from this one. This is three hours of alternating between heroic, cowardly, and completely insane characters. And the heroic doesn't get fair share.
There are way too many closeup shots of the grotesque and unusual. Probably correctly sensing that we'd be really really REALLY creeped out by Smeagol/Gollum (shudder), the director tosses us some over-the-top laughs at the short guy Gimli. By the second hour I kept waiting for Gimli to do a soft-shoe dance across the screen or do an Elvis impersonation.
The only characters that held my attention were the Ents, who were my favorite from the book. Other than Treebeard the Ents looked like Peter Jackson had bought some leftover costumes on eBay from the sets of Sid and Marty Croffts wacked-out shows in the 1970s.
Save your money. Eight bucks will buy a lot of stock these days.