Monkey-Plex Review: FILM: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

FILM: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 4 and a half monkeys!

How can a movie be three hours long, and still too short? This one manages that rare feat. When the final fade-out came, I was game for at least another hour.
Such is the curse of this trilogy, but folks, this is one hell of a “Part One.” I cannot wait until next December. So what did they get right? Tough for me to say; I’ve never read the LOTR Trilogy (nor “The Hobbit,” for that matter) which is unusual, seeing as I’m such a big sci-fi/fantasy dweeb. But from this Tolkien novice’s perspective, it’s all here. There was maybe one too many “Run, Frodo, run!” scenes – you’d think, after about the fifth time, something might actually catch up with him.
But the acting is great, the effects are spectacular, and the film has a very distinctive “epic” quality that was sadly missing from, oh, say, Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Also, director Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth looks real in a way George Lucas’s modern Star Wars long-ago worlds (based on a movie and three teaser trailers for Episode II) do not. The amount of location shooting, and the locations themselves, provide a very needed and very welcome grounding. This may be the movie that disproves the Lucas Sci-Fi/Fantasy film theory that these films are just people saying words in front of pretty backgrounds that you can add later through CGI. Certainly, the effects ball is back in ILM’s court. (I've already given up on Lucas's characters and writing.)
The only thing keeping this from being a five-monkey masterpiece is the unfortunate ending, or lack thereof, necessitated by the structure of this project. I was hoping for a little more resolution – but I’ll just have to wait, for 2002 and 2003. Can I buy advance tickets now?

Link |

Replies: 2 comments

Amen, Colin - a perfect review. Any movie that is gonna make you wait two years to see some halfling throw a ring into a fire (oops, did I spoil it?) can't get a perfect score. But other than that, what a wonderful movie. And what incredible invisible special effects. Elijah Wood is made about 4'3, John Rhys-Davies is about 3'6" and you can't spot the "trickery" - a real masterpiece!! This will definitely go down in history as the greatest screaming horse movie ever made!!

Posted by Sparky @ 12/22/2001 08:10 PM PST

Once again, late to judge, but I would like to say that this is my fav movie. Only a little while longer until the 2nd one, and I can't wait. At first I thought it would suck b/c I've never been a big fan of Elijah Wood, but he surprised me and did an excellent job! Question, though-someone was saying there were a lot of strange things in different scenes-like a car in one scene? I guess I need to check into it, b/c I've never seen anything like that. I loved this movie!

Posted by Amy @ 11/18/2002 10:08 PM PST

Comment:
feedback@REMOVEcolincampbell.net