I just saw The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King this after­noon. It was abso­lutely fantastic.

It’s the longest film of the tri­logy, run­ning to a bum-numbing 3 hours 20 minutes! But I have to say it was well worth it. I can­not recom­mend it enough.

The final part of the story is told extremely well. The scenes at Minas Tirith are breath tak­ing. The scale of the sets is awe­some! The battle scenes are great, but espe­cially the beasts and the war machines had me perched on the edge of my seat.

I found the dia­logue much more inter­est­ing in this final part. Although, in a cinema packed with school age chil­dren who are unable to con­cen­trate without talk­ing for more than about 20 minutes, it was, alas, not pos­sible to actu­ally hear all the dia­logue. I was sur­prised that so many chil­dren were watch­ing, but pleased too, des­pite the noise levels, that most of them were able to sit for that length of time.

I think Peter Jack­son has done a mar­velous job of sur­repti­tiously bring­ing back long films to the cinema. He has proven that you can make a very long film, that you can get an audi­ence to sit still for more than two and a half hours. All you need is a good story told well. You don’t need mega stars, you don’t need naked bod­ies or explod­ing cars, just good char­ac­ters well developed, and good storylines. Action? Yeah sure! But no blood and spill­ing guts required. Spe­cial Effects? Abso­lutely! But not for their own sake.

One con­sequence of all the hushed (and not so hushed some­time) con­ver­sa­tions going on around me was that I could get an insight into the people’s reac­tions to the movie. It was refresh­ing to hear that they ‘got it’, that they fol­lowed the plot and the inter­play between the char­ac­ters. Though some may not have had all the details quite right (“Is he back in the Spire?” “It’s the ‘Shire’ dummy!”).

The only low spot I can remem­ber from the whole movie was that some of the act­ing between Frodo and Sam was a little less than con­vin­cing. I don’t think they quite got the rela­tion­ship across prop­erly. The three or four girls in the row behind me were less than gripped by the big emo­tional scenes and amused them­selves by ima­gin­ing (aloud, unfor­tu­nately) the con­ver­sa­tion with a gay slant.

I will have to see it again, prob­ably in a late show­ing, to give myself a chance of hear­ing all of the last twenty minutes. Most of which was impossible to hear today after the atten­tion span of some of the audi­ence was exceeded.

Recom­men­ded.