Return of the King:
Now I know why movies are usually edited down to 2 and a half hours. Even for its great entertainment value, 215 minutes is over the limit for something that you’re seeing in a movie theatre. Not that I was checking my watch the whole way through, it’s just the last 25 minutes of ‘fluff’ that will bring on the yawning.
I think that those minutes could have been better spent on enriching the dialogue throghout, which was a little dry at times when it should have pulled on the heart strings, and extending the battle scene at Minas Tirith (which, though good, leaves you feeling somewhat deflated when it ends so abruptly and whimsically with the arrival of the undead army — and whatever happened to the Orc general?).
Interestingly, it is impressive when you enter the theatre 40 minutes before the start of screening and struggle to find two adjacent empty seats, given that the movie has been showing for two weeks already.
