The Lord Of The Rings - The Fellowship Of The Ring DVD > Reviews > For they are a bunch of good fellas!

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Standard
Soundtrack	Good

Advantages:	Enticement to watch subsequent parts of the trilogy
Disadvantages:	Special features lacks details of life in New Zealand

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

The haunting voice of Cate Blanchett provided the setting for this film. She presented the story of the creation, disappearance and finally the discovery of that 'evil' ring.

Not having read the book, I was not too enthusiastic about watching the film. Nor am I a fan of scifi, fantasy nor the violence I associated with the film. Thus far for the past few years, I had refused to watch this at the cinema. It wasn't until the final installment of the trilogy was I persuaded to watch this on DVD before watching the last part of the trilogy. I was greatly surprised by its effect on me.

Synopsis
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As mentioned before, the haunting voice of Cate set the scene for us, provided us with the history of the all powerful ring, where it is currently held by Bilbo Baggins, a very old but adventurous hobbit. Owning the ring had kept him young looking but felt his age no doubt. He decided to leave his village and left everything to his nephew Frodo Baggins.

Unfortunately, this coincided with the strengthening of the dark evil force who had been looking for his ring. The movie continued with Frodo's escape from the village to avoid the dark riders, his adventures on the road meeting with the different races of wizards, elves, men as well as creatures, both good and evil.

Verdict
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Despite the fantasy nature of the film, it is full of the classical twists and turns of human relationships, their friendship, love, hatred, ignorance, distrust and greed of one another.

The film's ability to draw me emotionally into it, even when I know that none of it is real but all fantasy. Yet, I found myself drawn in the story, into the characters, feeling their desires, happiness, sadness as well as the adrenaline rush when violence is near.

Second, the shots of the scenery are incredible. I love all the outdoor shots of the mountains, the plains, rivers as well as the caves. Then, there are all the beautiful buildings, especially the home of Elrond and those of the tree lady (Galadriel). I could not tell the difference between real images and those made digitally, such as Gollum (apparently). The architecture of the buildings were majestic while the sceneries were inspiring. If there was a movie that is able to create emotional exuberance and turmoil, this is it.

The music played a very important role in this film. The scary fighting scenes were driven by the drum beats while the softer tunes provided the emotive love scenes between Arwen and Aragorn. The music helped created the emotional turmoil throughout the movie, both the lows and the highs, some soothing while others full of rage.

What do I not like about the film? The strange names of characters and places are so difficult to remember. Which is why I created my own nick names for some of the characters after my first watch. There was the tree lady (Galadriel), the snag (Aragorn).

Actors and Actresses
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The one difficulty I have with this film is the large number of characters with difficult names. It is easy enough with the hobbits of Bilbo and Frodo but with the entrance of the elves and wizards I became easily confused and lost.

So, here is a partial list of the main characters, for me, that is.
Bilbo Baggins : The hobbit who had the ring.
Frodo Baggins : The nephew who inherited the ring.
Gandalf : Good wizard, plays with fireworks.
Sam Gamgee : Gardener to Frodo who accompanied Frodo on his adventure.
Merry : Naughty hobbit who accompanied Frodo.
Pippin : Really naughty hobbit who caused trouble throughout the movie.
Aragorn : Really cute looking ranger who saved Frodo, half the time.
Legolas : Really cute looking elf who never seems to run out of arrows to shoot.
Gimli : Big hearted Dwarf.
Boromir : Seemingly bad but really good human.
Arwen : Love interest of Aragorn, an elf, daughter of Lord Elrond.
Elrond : King of the Elf, residing in Riverndell.
Galadriel : Tree lady, fortune teller and mind reader.
Gollum : Creature who had the ring for 500 years before losing it to Bilbo.

I am glad that Peter Jackson chose these actors and actresses. They did so well, bringing out the characters. None of them imposed themselves on the movie which is how it should be. They did so well that I could actually feel the mood, through the paths they were talking and throughout the dialogue.

My favourites? It will have to be Aragorn. Tall, strong, handsome and a bit on the dark side. Yummy!:)

Special Features
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The special features available in the second DVD was a bit of a disappointment. I expected some blubbers, some comic relief and maybe more in depth documentaries. One of the interesting events were the scouring of the location for Hobbiton, the village where Frodo was living before setting on his journey. We were presented with the New Zealand farmland before being transformed into a Hobbits home, complete with vegetable garden and smoking chimneys.

The other more interesting features I found were the lordoftherings.net featurettes where each featuerette was between 2 to 5 minutes long. Each featurette described the behind the scene work on finding the locations for Hobbiton, creating the villages of Hobbiton and Bree as well as Riverndell. The creation of Riverndell was shown from artwork on paper to the creation of the trees in the courtyard.

The featurette also described the various languages of Middle-earth which included that of the Elvish, which appeared quite frequently in the movie. Apparently throughout the making of the movie, there were two linguists working with all the actors to ensure everyone had the right pronunciations and were able to speak Elvish when required.

Included as well were individual interviews with several of the main characters such as Elijah Wood(Frodo), Veggo Mortensen(Aragorn) and Ian McKellen(Gandalf). This, I found interesting but lacking in details about their experiences and life in New Zealand while making the film. More about how they lived would have been interesting.

There was also the music video of Enya's "May It Be". There was nothing on Howard Shore other than how he had to create the orchestra pieces to portray the different events in the movie.

They included a preview to the extended edition of the movie, an enticement to buy the special edition as well as a preview to the second part of the trilogy.

Conclusion
==========
I think the DVD convinced me to watch the subsequent parts of the trilogy but given that there is the extended version in 4 DVD set, I rather buy the latter instead of the simple 2 DVD set. This version cost 18 pounds while the special extended version is only 20 pounds on amazon.co.uk. So definitely the 4 DVD version is much better value for money.

But knowing me, I'll just wait for the entire trilogy, with all the extended versions and specials before I buy. So, that means a couple more years of waiting.