Bored of the Rings Already (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (DVD))

Member Name: plipplop

Product:	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (DVD)
Date:	06/04/07 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The scenes in the dwarf mine

Disadvantages: Everything else

Despite being rather dubious of the attention lavished upon Peter Jackson’s epic production of Tolkien’s greatest novels, I must confess to experiencing eager anticipation of this movie. I am a big fan of fantasy films, purely because the writers and creators can truly let their imaginations run riot. Despite having never properly read The Fellowship of the Ring (I abandoned ship after about fifty pages) I was assured that this was one of the finest fantasy stories ever written and that the movie would be three hours of sheer, unadulterated enjoyment. Ever the controversial one, I’m afraid that it falls to me to dispel that myth, and to explain why I found this movie so disappointingly dull.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first in the acclaimed trilogy of The Lord of the Rings and tells us the epic tale of Middle Earth’s history. In ancient times, a set of powerful magical rings was created and shared amongst the different tribes of Middle Earth. Unbeknown to the bearers of these rings, there was another ring, which was much more powerful and was born by an evil dark lord. Using the power of the ring, the dark lord waged war on the people of Middle Earth and built up a huge army of evil creatures, which gradually ravaged the globe. In an enormous act of defiance, the people of Middle Earth rose up against the evil forces and waged a terrible battle, during which the evil dark lord was finally vanquished. His magical ring passed in to the hands of another, who was subsequently murdered and the ring was lost in a riverbed. Many years later, the ring was discovered by a strange cave creature, who worshipped and coveted the ring for 500 years – until one day, when a Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins happened across the ring, and took it home for himself.

The film opens at Baggins’ birthday party, where he is re-united with his old friend Gandalf (a wizard) to whom he explains that he has decided to leave the Hobbits’ hamlet (The Shire). Upon doing so, he leaves the ring in the care of Frodo Baggins (his nephew). When Gandalf realises the nature and origin of the ring, he warns Frodo of its power and advises him that he must leave the Shire forever, as the forces of the dark lord will hunt him down and bring death and destruction to the other hobbits. And so, Frodo begins his journey, gathering friends and allies along the way and facing terrible dangers in his quest to bring the ring to safety. The tribes of Middle Earth form a fellowship of warriors, whose aim is to protect Frodo and to ensure that he can return the ring from where it came – in the very heart of the dark lord’s citadel.

It’s all epic stuff, and with a premise like that, you would scarcely expect anything other than a fantastic piece of storytelling. Whilst I cannot fault the enthusiasm and imagination of the writer, I struggled to like this film. I put this down to one primary factor – the same factor that left me so bored with Harry Potter, Toy Story and countless other films. I am an adult – I enjoy films that are made for adults. The Fellowship of the Ring is a family film, bordering on being a child’s film, and as such it is sanitised and softened to such an extent that I found it to be rather patronising. In spite of its savage plot, The Fellowship lacks both sparkle and bite. The case for the prosecution:

THE HOBBITS

Whilst they may initially be endearing, the Hobbits are eventually intensely irritating. The Shire reminded me of Teletubbie Land, with its perfect green grass and bright flowers – all it was missing was the singing vacuum cleaner. The opening scenes are so unbelievably contrived and screamed Disney at me. The whole intention of the Shire scenes is to portray a smiling, happy existence of singing, dancing little people provided purely to act as a contrast to the violent theme of the rest of the film. The Hobbits are supposed to be cute and loveable – I thought they were a nuisance – and not surprisingly they fall into all the cliched little traps that these movie characters would. They frighten easily, they have silly country accents, they get up to mischief and they keep bumping into one another. Sorry – kids might find this amusing – but I did not.

THE SANITISED VIOLENCE

The ring wraiths (Nazgul) provided a perfect opportunity to inject a little nastiness into the proceedings – but then of course, a PG-certificate would not have been achieved. Instead, they are merely portrayed as dark figures on horseback, hidden beneath their hoods like a cheap Doctor Who bad guy. I am not suggesting for one moment that the film should have been put together like a horror film, but all the action was cleared sanitised to such an extent that I thought they rather lost much of the malevolence associated with the denizens of Middle Earth. Scenes of torture, combat and evil-doing are all cloaked in such a way that at times I felt like I was watching a CBBC drama. There are plenty of cliches kicking around too – sorry, but cloaked figures that drop insects and bugs from their body has been done before.

THE LENGTH

At just under three hours, The Fellowship is relentlessly, unnecessarily tiring. I’d be surprised if anyone was actually interested in all of the dialogue that was taking place. The danger with fantasy action films is that your viewers are interested in only one thing – fantasy action. The opening to the film set the scene to a potentially exciting, action-packed adventure, which we never really got. The Baggins party in The Shire is drawn out, the chase scenes with the Nazgul are long and predictable. It takes nearly the whole film for the inevitable – and disappointing – conflict at the end, and yet all the way along, important details are still missed out or glossed over. Despite Frodo and his party having travelled for days/weeks at a time, the army of the dark sorcerer seems able to run cross-country and catch up with them in a matter of hours. I got the feeling that the makers decided that the length of the film should be in line with the length of the book – I could have edited The Fellowship down by at least thirty minutes, without missing any key plot elements.

IT’S ONLY PART ONE

Despite the fact that The Fellowship is widely recognised as being the first part in a trilogy, I still think it is important to enable the film to stand on its own merits. This just isn’t the case. The film builds up to an eventual climax that the viewer never really gets – and the last ten minutes of the film seem to dribble along like a leaking sewer pipe. The Fellowship is inescapably part one of three, and in many ways simply sets the scene for what is yet to come. It would be unfair to criticise the makers for this – the novels must surely work in exactly the same way – but it is something for a potential viewer to bear in mind. Don’t expect to watch this movie and go home with all questions answered and a nice satisfied feeling in your belly – you’ve probably got another six hours of viewing time to endure before that will happen.

SUMMING UP

If I had to conclude one over-riding reason why I didn’t like this film, it would be this – it’s boring. It’s too long, it’s too drawn out and the characters are too irritating to keep you enthralled. This is an enormous shame, because I did enjoy some parts of the film. I thought that the sequences in the dwarf mines were superb – suitably sinister, atmospheric and exciting and I thought that the whole look of the setting was stunning. I thought that Gandalf certainly looked the part – even if I was expecting him to demonstrate a lot more power than he actually he did. Despite my intense dislike of the hobbits, I also thought that the effects used to make them look so small compared to everyone else were great – although I did notice the odd rather obvious child substitute from time to time.

I didn’t want to dislike this film. I wanted to watch it, be enthralled and then write a complimentary, positive review. As it is, I was grossly disappointed. Perhaps my expectation of the genre was unfair, but I expected so much more than this.

Accordingly – not recommended.

Summary: 1 of 3 was enough