Okay, first off this flick is NOT just 2.5 hours like everyone says, it's a full THREE hours long, so don't drink anything before giing in. Also, you get to see the Spiderman trailer. That said, let's get onm with this.

Visually, it's like a Frank Frazeta painting suddenly animated itself, a colorful page straight from the old classic fantasy. From The Shire to the mountain-spanning halls of Moria it was a feast for the eyes. Through crafty photography and set design, they also managed to get normal-sized actors to appear as the diminutive Hobbits and stout-heighted Dwarves (Believe it or not, they managed to squeeze John Rhys-Davis into Gimli's short stature), yet another aspect to complete the illusion.

Plot-wise, it appears loyal enough to the book and a grand effort at classic fantasy. While I have seen more exiting films, you have to remember that this is Part 1 of 3, and so as the first third quite enjoyable. it sets the stage and brings us up to the escape from Moria and Gandalf's downward plunge that first signals the demise of the Fellowship. Interesting and well worth seeing (oh yeah, and that's what Orcs and a Balrog LOOK like)

A couple of last things. First, a little break in the world that I spotted, though perhaps taken from the novel itslf (i don't feel like looking it up right now): as Frodo first wakes up in Rivendell, Gandalf tells him it's October 24... After all the set up of the First Age, Second Age, and so on, and the fact that this is supposed to take place WELL before the existence of Gregorian or Julian calendars (or Christianity, for that matter), the mentioning of a month name that doesn't yet exist is a rather large errata. Second, there appears to be an easter egg at the very end of the credits, in the form of what I'm guessing is a couple lines of Elvish script written in English lettering; if anyone reads Elvish then please let me know what the heck it says.