Don't believe the hype

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2003)

***CONTAINS VERY MILD SPOILERS***
First of all, I must say I haven't seen the first movie and haven't read the books, so maybe some will discard my views, but I think it lends me the advantage of judging this purely on its cinematic merits, of which I'm sad to say there are not that many. The scenes were disjointed and I would bet that at least twenty minutes could have been shaved off its length by not resorting to sweeping scenic views every two minutes - at times it looked like a commercial by the New Zealand tourist board. Nothing in the actors' performances made me care about their fate. When Elijah Wood (as Frodo) tries to show moral turmoil, he looks like a guy trying to remember where he left his diary. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) seems to think that staring into the distance conveys intensity - it doesn't. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is the only saving grace, performance wise, but his main scenes arrive far too late in the day, by that time I was bored out of my tree.
My main problem with the film is actually the same thing many people name as their favourite aspect - Tolkien painstakingly created this alternate world, but that's what bogs the film down and prevents it from exploding into action - so much time is wasted explaining things, and in the end, none of it is grounded in reality, which makes it very difficult to care about the outcome of the story.
The only moment of gravitas in the entire picture comes just before the battle of Helms Deep, but is utterly ruined by some lame jokes from the Jah-Jah Binks of the piece - Gimli. Just when the solemn weight of what is about to be decided (we are told) is making an impression, the one-liners destroy any sense of impending significance. If it was an attempt at brave gallows humour on the frontline, it failed miserably.
I don't really blame Peter Jackson for this mess of a film - he could have made a movie that was 45 minutes shorter, fewer wasted scenes and less aimless meandering - but that would have seemingly meant deviating from the plot of the book, and that was obviously judged to be too big a risk given the project's obvious money-making ability with the millions of diehard Tolkien-ites.
Overall: 4/10 (marked generously due to the constraints of filming such a long and tiresome story)