December 02, 2012

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)


It’s hard to believe that its been 11 years since Fellowship of the Ring was released. When I went to see this at the cinemas, I was like a good chunk of the audience that had never read the books. So I wasn’t one of those that would be able to see what they had missed out. This is the extended edition with plenty of stuff added in. The original film was always good but what’s great about an extended edition is that it can pad things out a bit and despite not really adding anything new to the overall story its always good to have these bits instead of being in the deleted scenes part of the DVD.

The story itself is one that doesn’t really have much of a key scene such as Two Towers, but what it does have is the time to show us each character and what purpose they play. Elijah Wood is ok as Frodo but every other face he pulls is like he’s just pooped in his pants. Sean Astin is quite good as Sam but the bromance is what gets in the way. Billy Boyd & Dominic Monaghan are a good double act and have some funny scenes together, especially at Bilbo’s birthday party. Orlando Bloom is just plain annoying, Viggo Mortensen puts in his best performance of the trilogy in this one. But it is Ian McKellen who steals the film. Everytime he was on the screen I was loving the film and just wished that he would be in it more. When I first saw his ‘death’ I was gutted thinking that it was the last we would see of him.

The Fellowship is a really solid film that sets the trilogy up nicely. Its quite easy to make fun of the bromance that happens between Frodo and Sam but it doesn’t detract from what is otherwise a fine film. At 178 minutes it doesn’t rush itself at any point and that’s good. The actors range from ok to fantastic but it is such an ensemble film that you could get away with a mediocre performance because there wouldn’t be time to notice.

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