Spry elderly Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is a wizard, which we know because he wears a pointed hat and hasn't shaved since the Truman administration. Gandalf dispatches the effeminate Frodo to Mordor, accompanied by loyal bodyguard Sam (Sean Astin), comic relief sidekicks Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, taciturn Jesus-king Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), angst-ridden Boromir (Sean Bean), intense albino archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom), who hasn't missed a shot since the Eisenhower Administration, and burly and grumpy egotist dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies).
On their way to Mordor, the gang takes in pit stops in Elfland to visit humorless Elrond (Hugo Weaving), his hottie daughter Arwen (Liv Tyler), and Frodo's aged uncle Bilbo (Ian Holm). Later the travellers encounter glowing beauty Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) in a forest.
The bad guy here is Saruman (Christopher Lee), who is a wizard like Gandalf, but has joined the dark side (i.e. turned Republican) since the pay is better. Saruman hatches a huge CGI army of nameless orcs to battle our heroes, although it must be said that orcs are lousy fighters (one is dispatched by a frying pan) except for the one-in-a-thousand giant.
How others will see it. A resounding commercial success, this film led to two sequels to complete the trilogy, and inevitably, Peter Jackson is now working on the Tolkien prequel The Hobbit. This movie was also a critical favorite, picking up 13 Oscar nominations. It won in four categories, including Best Cinematography (Andrew Lesnie).
At imdb.com, the movie has a whopping 435,169 user votes and an astonishing 8.8 user rating. There is a slight drop off with advancing age: 9.0 under 18, 8.8 under 30, 8.7 under 45, and 8.3 over 45 with a 7.8 among women over 45. The appeal of the film is obvious: it is entertaining, with memorable characters, cool special effects, a time-honored theme of good versus evil with life as we know it at stake, and enough inevitable heroic violence to please the red meat crowd.
How I felt about it. Certainly, The Fellowship of the Ring is watchable, as well as unintentionally amusing. It is not a bad movie. Unfortunately, it isn't good either, but in the netherworld of average-plus. This is the sort of movie where Cate Blanchett doesn't simply turn down possession of the ring, but has to put on a one-minute freak show first. The sort of movie where Frodo is a wide-eyed sissy whose masculinity is outsourced to his fellowship companions. The sort of movie where a hottie woman wants to throw away eternal youth to be with an adventurer that couldn't purchase a life insurance policy from the talking television lizard.
This is the sort of movie where Gimli's dad has an elaborate burial tomb despite dying in a last stand along with all the other dwarves. So who built the big sarcophagus for him, the orcs?
The problem here, to be succinct, is that Peter Jackson follows the H.L. Mencken quotation, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." There are too many none too bright folks who prefer CGI special effects to insight.