I saw Lord of the Rings last Thursday. So why didn’t I post a review?

Because it’s all been said. It’s great and completes a mammoth masterpiece of movie filmmaking that should get a special Oscar for this one-movie-in-three-parts. That it has its problems and overdoes the slo-mo drama a bit much. That the 40-minute finale takes a bit too long. That Christopher Lee is missed and we can’t wait for the DVD Extended Edition. Even the most common observation: that it is so long and so packed with entertaining moments that there really isn’t a good spot to run to the restroom.

More Info Than You Wanted: I sipped my soda and made it just fine…but SIP YOUR SODA! If you have to go, I can offer this advice (which is a spoiler to the few of you yet to see it): if you are worried that you can’t leave because Shelob is going to attack Frodo any moment now, go ahead and go. The acting is wonderful, the interplay between Sean Astin, Elijah Wood and Gollum is intense and well-done, but these scenes do go one for a lot longer than I thought they wood and Shelob doesn’t appear until well into the second hour! Considering this was a scene at the tail end of the second book, I thought it would be in the first ten minutes. It’s not. You don’t really want to miss any of those scenes, but if you’re considering damaging your kidneys to see the movie, make that run when the hobbits are at the foot of the white stairs.

Some scenes don’t work as well without the context of the book…or just don’t work “right.” Case in point would be Faramir’s attempt to retake a conquered port city because his father urges him to. I’ll be honest: it made me hate Faramir because he’s clearly charging to his doom in order to win his father’s favor, and it makes me wonder if the father isn’t right about Boromir being the better of the two. Boromir wouldn’t be so afeared of his father’s disproval that he would lead dozens of men into certain death.

But the only real problem I have had with all three LOTR movies is one of editing. Pauses that take too long, moments that are filmed slo-mo when they would be more dramatic if they weren’t “dramatic”, slow moments here and there. And frankly, if Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler weren’t in the last two movies it would have been better, because their scenes are mostly boring and they’re always overcranked so as if that weren’t bad enough they take more time out of the movies. Remember that awful pseudo-intermission in “The Two Towers” where Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel spends five minutes droning exposition in her breathy voice, telling the viewer what’s going on in case they weren’t watching? There was no point except to include Galadriel in all three films.

All of this is, of course, nitpicking. Very nitpicking. Because I love the movie, and would encourage everyone in the world to see it.

I just wish I had something…anything…original to say about it.