Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Sorry folks, but this film is nowhere near as good as some gushing people on IMDB seem to think. I do notice more +ve comments in the US than the UK.

OK, so the visual effects are good. So what? Jackson had the technology available to do that. He needs to do much more than employ them effectively to produce a film worthy of greatness. This isn't great, indeed it's barely good.

The film is full of flaws. Important plotlines are absent, as noted by a few others here. To name but a few:

• the palantir cast by Wormtongue out of Orthanc in the book simply appears in the pool. This is absurd. It's the most valuable thing in the tower (as Gandalf tells Pippin in the book). This happens because Jackson has cut Saruman out entirely from film III. This is a terrible mistake. Having made so much of Saruman in I and II it just leaves a hole in III full of the unexplained. Jackson's error occurs because he should have put the full fall of Saruman at the end of II (as in the book).

• Eowyn's love for Aragorn is much stronger in the films than the book. The problem with this is that she simply stands idly by whilst Aragorn takes the limp character of Arwen to him. There is no development of the love between Eowyn and Faramic which in part answers the aforementioned in the book.

• Eowyn's slaying of the witch king of Angmar is one of the best moments of the book - a truly wondrous occurrence. In the film it is hacked in two halves whilst we await Aragorn's arrival by boat. Even the tossing of her golden hair is underplayed so much that it's anticlimactic for those of us who know the book well.

• Faramir's character is completely changed from the book. He now appears less nice than Boromir, which is deeply problematic and raises a major flaw in why he releases the ring from his grasp.

• Sorry everyone but much as I like Gollum he is little more than a CGI cartoon character. If you like computer games, fine. If you want a bit of realism, not.

• Am I alone in finding the slaying of the poor oliphaunt by Legolas sad? I felt sorry for the creature.

• the John Merrick style leader of the Orcs is one of the worst creature-creations I've seen

• Sam is awful. For those of you who like Sean Austin ... o dear. I think this may be a British / American thing. Some of those around me in the cinema started laughing at his toe-curlingly awful soppiness. Truly dreadful. The plausibly simple gardener of the book is now transformed into a college philosopher, and it's not a pretty spectacle.

• the moment when the hobbits appear to bounce over Frodo's bed is another soppy Jackson moment. Again, people in the cinema in London laughed at it. Even if Tolkien did intend a slight homosexual underplay to their relationships, I don't think he'd have admired Jackson heavy-handidness here.

• the scouring of the shire has gone altogether. Maybe that was right, but part of the whole point of this epic tale is that simple folk rise up against the mighty, and then have to confront that evil on their doorstep.

• the Shire is hideously twee, with not a petal out of place. Argh. If that's paradise give me the Emyn Muil any day!

• and finally, after more than 10 hours the demise of Sauron is dreadfully anti-climactic. The particularly silly portrayal of Sauron as a 1970's electrical storm-lamp is part of the problem here. Instead of personifying him, we have the demise of a 'thing' for which I felt no satisfaction at all. Dull.

• we then have to endure another 40 minutes as the movie drifts away into a confused ending, with a terrible prosthetic-Bilbo (looking like Salieri in Amadeus).

If this wins an Oscar other than for special effects it will be a scandal. But then, since when has that mattered. Afterall, if Titanic can win them it shows that the appetite for drivel is unassuaged.