Perhaps Caryn James at NY Times needs some help? Calling Return of the King void of emotion and lacking characterization; did he not see the other movies? Perhaps he needs to read the book to understand?
Anyway, Melanchlics Anonymous put up this post about some backlash on RotK.
I do agree that this movie will be loved or hated by geeks/nerds with way too much time to spend on things like this.
Now, as for saying that it was designed to appeal to adolescents…that’s just low. I’m pretty sure that I have the mental capacity to handle higher thoughts and if Mr. James would pay a little bit of attention to the plot he’d understand that Mr. Tolkein said many things in the books and thus Mr. Jackson said many as well (if not all the same ideas).
Anyway, I’ve been rather vague because I don’t have the time or patience to point things out right now…I’ll get to it eventually…most likely the summer because I plan to reread the Lord of the Rings then.