Reviews for The Lord of the Rings

This sad attempt to animate Tolkien's great books is a failure in almost every respect. The way the hobbits are animated is practically a mockery. Frodo's height changes from scene to scene. Sam looks and sounds like a very short Goofy who has been breathing helium balloons. Merry and Pippin are identical in almost every respect, so much so that the animaters seem to mix them up in a few scenes. To make matters worse, there isn't even an entire movie here. It suddenly stops in the middle of a battle scene. Literally. Gandalf is seen charging into battle with armies raging and dark clouds gathering up ahead and suddenly the screen goes blank and a voice mutters something about the end of Part One. No other parts were ever made. This entire movie is a waste of time. There are enormous holes in what little plot is established. For the sake of fairness, I will say that Frodo's personality remains true to the book, as does Gandalf's and Aragorn's. The rest, however, are pretty 2-dimensional. The thing isn't even moderately entertaining.

I wasn't really all that let down when I saw this film, as, truth be told, I didn't really expect all that much. The Lord Of The Rings is a masterpiece of such imagination, poetry, and scope, that I frankly doubt if it can ever be successfully captured on film. Each person, as he or she reads the trilogy, develops mental pictures of the terrain, the characters, the battles, etc. We all know how the characters "should" sound. How can a Hollywood product ever measure up to the mental movie that the novels projected onto our hearts and minds? So, this film is just okay. Not totally horrible, but no masterpiece either. And the abrupt ending and the switching between roto-scoping and standard animation are disconcerting.

This movie has had a lot of bad press, and there are certainly things wrong with it, but I think those things have been stressed to the exclusion of the good qualities. I liked this movie a lot, despite its faults. The basic spirit of the books was preserved - the spreading of the evil of Mordor, the nobility of those who struggled against it, the fear felt by those same characters, and the difficulty of the fight - which is an impressive accomplishment. I very much enjoyed the way the characters were portrayed, although the coarseness of Aragorn's features was a bit startling at first. The battle scenes are exciting, the descent through Moria is appropriately creepy, and the breaking up of the Fellowship, with the subsequent pursuit of the Orcs by Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, was excellent. The plot is skimped in many places, true, but the books were so popular that they could afford to let some things go unsaid and move the story quickly. I think the Peter Beagle script is hugely underrated, especially given the huge amount of text he had to condense and the characters and plot twists that couldn't be included because of the lack of time. Nobody will ever make a movie worthy of Tolkien's books, but this was a better attempt than it gets credit for.

The plot ~ Is there anyone on earth who doesn't know it? Well, for that one person who has been on a desert island since 1940, here it is. Sauron, a being of pure evil, lost his magical ring of power many generations ago. Even without it, he is growing powerful enough to overrun the world, and he seeks the ring to break the last resistance from men, elves, and dwarves. The ring had accidentally come into the hands of beings called hobbits, and the hobbit who inherits it, Frodo, makes the difficult decision to go to the heart of Sauron's own fortress to destroy the ring and Sauron's power. He is given several companions, friends of his as well as a powerful wizard and representatives of the other three races, but the group is broken up and he ultimately carries on with only his faithful servant.

The characters ~ Frodo is an immensely appealing hero, a modest young "everyman" who somehow reaches into himself for the courage to do what no one else dares. The other hobbits - Merry, Pippin, and Sam - aren't given much development, and Sam is a disappointment compared to the book. Of Frodo's companions in the Fellowship, Boromir is also not developed well, but Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli are distinct characters, done very well - I particularly liked Aragorn's personality and the interplay between Legolas and Gimli.

The bad news ~ The entire film is rotoscoped, which was not a good idea. The pacing is uneven, with a couple of places where the action seems to come to a dragging halt (such as at the Rivendell ford). Inevitably, much of what was good about the books is left out. Sam comes across as rather stupid, without the original's shrewd, practical intelligence.

The good news ~ The very fact that someone attempted a serious and adult interpretation of the novels is a plus, right away. (The Hanna Barbera versions lacked emotional depth and were much more cartoony.) The story itself is a never-fail winner, given a good interpretation under the restricted circumstances. Most of the characters are enjoyable, and the portrayal of their courage, nobility, and friendship under Sauron's constant, dark, dangerous threat of death (and fates worse than death) raise this movie far above the usual fare.

Ok, i have been a fan of the books ever since i was able to say "Hobbit". and i personally think the movie did the book justice, and then some. who am i fooling, IT WAS AWESOME!!!! the only thing i can think of that was wrong with it was 1. Not enough shots of Frodo, 2. the balrog looked like a water buffalo, and therefore cuddly, and 3. the thing at Isengaurd was just sick.... other than that, it was the greatest movie ever made.