Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Movie Review -- A Bad Hobbit

When Mark said two-oh-one for the time of the movie, I thought that I could handle Middle Earth for a couple hours on Christmas. But it turns out that with the eight or so alternate endings that were shown in succession, he was talking two HUNDRED and one minutes, which is ... what, 3 hours and twenty-one minutes of mind-numbing digital effects.

If you don't want to know more, go no further than this. If you don't care or want an honest review of the last part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, entitled Return of the King, read on ...

I once reviewed a movie for the junior high school newsletter; so, while not a true professional, I do have experience in this field. My thoughts on Return of the King go something like this:

1) I'm very pleased that we went to a matinee and did not pay the evening rates for tickets.
2) I dozed off twice; so, I figured out that Gollum convinced Frodo that Sam was out to get the ring, and that's why Frodo was all alone fighting a huge spider. The fight scene was altogether too long to be falling down in spider webs and other icky shit, but I understand that getting all spun up in silk by the giant spider got Frodo where he needed to be for the denouement and, therefore, gave Sam the opportunity to be the hero, which I think he was ... at least, in a couple of the endings, he was the hero; and I ended up disliking Frodo, so I'm glad that Sam did so well and Frodo ... well, whatever.
3) That PG-13 rating is an indication that parents can bring their 4, 5 and 6-year-old brats into the theater to scream and cry because these ugly cocksuckers that fight for Evil are the things that might come out of the closets at night -- I realize that "fuck" and "shit" were not in the Middle Earth lexicon, but the bad guys killed like close to a million good guys, catapulted their heads onto screaming women and children, and were just plain, old bad-dream ugly slaughtering innocent women and children, not to mention getting smashed, stabbed, and festooned until Middle Earth was free from tyranny. PG-13? I think not.
4) There was no disclaimer that animals were not harmed during the4 making of the film. This troubles me greatly. The elephants were brutalized. That woman chopped off the head of an ostrich that was digitally altered so that it could fly ... or something. But it was terrible the way the animals were treated.
5) Speaking of the woman with the cleft chin just like Viggo Mortensen, who insead of falling in love with her opted for the non-human elf-chick played by Liv Tyler, who killed the flying ostrich-turned-dragon-that-didn't-breathe-fire, could we get a little bit more creative with the script? "No man can kill me!" says the evil guy with no face, kind of like the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come; and after he gets stabbed in the back -- yes, in the back -- by a non-human, back-stabbing little Hobbit, she whips off her helmet-mask affair, like you knew she would, and exclaims, "I am a woman!" and she runs the sword through the guy's head. And she gets shocked! Being knowledgeable about electricity, I can tell you that this kind of thing is impossible nowadays. Maybe in Middle Earth, things like this were commonplace, but I just couldn't relate.
6) If I have to look at that actor, Ethan Allen ... or whatever name that guy who played Frodo the Hobbit goes by ... in another movie, I will not go. In fact, I will not be watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Day the Earth Stood Still, or E.T. ever again because I know the little rat bastard was in one of those movies; and I have seen too much of his artificial-looking face in the last three years ... and in six months or so, any time you turn on cable, one of those Lord of the Rings movies will be on. I may give up TV at that point.

If you have any comments or any criticisms of this review, all feedback is welcome.