The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (2003)

(In theaters, December 2003) I may not be the biggest fan of The Lord Of The Rings, but the though of “reviewing” part or all of it makes me feel vaguely ashamed, as it sometimes happens when a film leaves the bounds of ordinary criticism to just become “it”, a referent about which critical qualifiers are useless. Certainly, The Return Of The King has a lot of spectacular visual effects and an overabundance of finales and a place for a really good knock-knock joke (“Who’s there?” “Aragorn” “Aragorn who?” “Aragornna Kick Your Butt!”) and some killer action scenes and exemplary direction by Peter Jackson and all that jazz. But really, I couldn’t care less about a star rating or the fact that this third volume is better or worse than any of the two others: It concludes a monumental fantasy epic in such a way that I can only gasp at the magnitude of the 11-some hours achievement. This is pretty much the best Lord Of The Rings adaptation we could hope for. And that is all that is worth writing down.