Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

New Line films presents

Starring: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen

Directed by: Peter Jackson

Rating: ****

Plot: The end has come. Frodo and Sam with their ugly ass guide Gollum travel up towards Mount Doom to destroy a ring that holds such evil power it can make small fury midgets tremble. Oh yeah by the way the ultimate battle between good and evil happens as they travel and the pimping Gandalf must unite men to fight for the right cause. A lot of fighting and a BIG SPIDER ensue.

Acting: Well let me just say my problem with The Two Towers was the fact that it had no character development and the battle scene ripped off the battle scene from Army of Darkness were ignored while watching ROTK. This film focuses on man and Hobbit and Elf and Dwarf dilemmas and actually does a great job at it. Viggo Mortensen plays Aragon the soon to be king. The two films before this one I felt did not focus on him enough, this one did and did it well. Also Sean Astin who plays Sam the hobbit helping Frodo on his journey, well he showed pure acting chops in this film. He had more emotion and heart than the entire cast wrapped up together. Many scenes where his character alone had to make major decisions and his acting performance was true to heart and very meaningful. Legolas and Gimli are kind of out of this film, they each have their moments but Orlando Bloom says a total of like four lines tops, which I guess is a good thing since he really isn't much of an actor.

Directing/Writing: Is this film the best film ever made? HELL NO. Is it fun? HELL YES. I haft to say Peter Jackson made one hell of a cool trilogy but it is far from best film ever made status and I will tell you why. The editing in this film was way too choppy and I didn't understand why. Fellowship of the Ring had such a smooth style to it but this film looses that style. Maybe its because of rating because a lot of the chopping came during battle sequences. Now this movie does have great battle sequences big arrow and sword battles, serious good vs. evil stuff here I loved it. The best thing about the movie is not its battle sequences or its heart felt scenes of loss and love. Its the giant spider that hunts Frodo. Oh man I have never seen a spider look that good on film, ever. I was loving it, I was rooting for the spider to win during the movie (and pissing people off at the same time). Now the first three hours of this film is great, a lot of fun, lots of people sword fighting, guys being lit on fire and bodies being tossed around by monsters. That stuff I loved. It's just the last thirty minutes of this film is like being tortured by Barney the dinosaur. It is awful, like GOD AWFUL!!! Like CBS movie of the week corny bull shit awful. I didn't get it I was laughing during all these pointless stupid scenes that were never mentioned in the book. I was so confused so I laughed and even made a joke during he film, which again pissed off everyone around me. Like I understand people love these movies hard core, but come on don't trick yourself into taking that type of stupid crap. So the last thirty minutes is amazingly over the top and silly and leaves the trilogy with a bad taste in your mouth. The ending almost made me forget the rest of the movie. I just can't wait for the 4-disk dvd set of this movie comes out so I can see what they cut out. Until then this movie upset me and I want my almost four hours of my life back!!! Only kidding of course.

Overall: It's a fun time but this movie has flaws and if you can ignore them, well good for you but otherwise look out for the ending you may think the movie ends, and then another twenty minutes come along. So watch out.