I have a confession to make.

Despite being a fantasy fan , I have never read Tolkien.

I'll give you a minute to digest that, or to hit "back" because nobody who has never read the books could possibly give a good review for this movie.

Still with me? All right, let's go.

As the world learned last year, fantasy is making something of a comeback. This, of course, makes me very happy, and I rejoice every time I hear someone who used the term 'dungeonmaster' in a derogatory manner in high school rave about how much they love Lord of the Rings. I smile every time I pass a giant Tolkien display in a bookstore. It gives me a warm feeling when I tell someone I'm reading a fantasy novel, and they don't automatically assume it's got Fabio on the cover and extensive use of the word 'turgid'. For some of us, the fantastic, the magical, and the impossible are the way we'd much rather see the world, and I love that so many who scorned the genre have been mesmerized by what is arguably the most ambitious undertaking in cinematic history.

I think it's likely that I'm better off waiting to read the books. Many of my friends and internet acquaintances practically read them in the womb, and while I've yet to meet anyone who dislikes the films (for a good reason, not something like "too long" or, "too many English accents"), Tolkien fans nitpick in much the same way I did in the Harry Potter review. My best friend refuses to read the Harry Potter books because she'd much rather enjoy the films the way they're made and then go back and read what they should or could have been. I feel much the same way about Lord of the Rings. If I don't know what's supposed to happen, I'm not disappointed when it gets changed a little. On opening night, the theater is full of whispers from outraged, or even just slightly disappointed fans, and I am happy to be able to say that all my whispers were things like "Hey, I wanna go to the tree meeting!" or "Why is there only one with a torch? Shouldn't they have a backup, maybe? Or is this the Orc Olympics?"

I'm fairly certain that most people who are taking time out of their busy days to read this review have already seen the movie. This is a sci-fi/fantasy magazine, its readers know their stuff, and I very much doubt I have to explain the plot of this film. So, we'll skip all that filler and exposition, and get down to the good stuff.

Taking notes in a movie theater is difficult. Taking notes in a movie theater while watching a movie that is mostly dark is even more difficult. It appears that I took several notes on top of one another, and I'm doing my best to decipher them. In addition, it also appears that the pen I was using was running low on ink, so this should be interesting.

Let's start with the flow. I thought much of the movie was somewhat choppy, but not necessarily in a bad way. Just as I would begin to get into whatever Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli were doing, suddenly I'd be watching Frodo and Sam, who I had very likely forgotten about since their last appearance. Merry and Pippin continually took me by surprise, because I totally forgot about them at least twice in the course of the movie. My memory may not be the greatest in the world, but I can usually recall with clarity things that happened half an hour ago. I'm still unsure if this is a testament to Peter Jackson's (or, dare I add, J.R.R. Tolkien's) talent as a storyteller, or my own decimation of brain cells in college, but I found myself thinking of nothing but what was on the screen, and being thoroughly disappointed when the focus shifted to another plot line.

The journey of Frodo and Sam (Elijah Wood and Sean Astin-who I still seem to have some lingering Goonies-era crush on, for reasons probably best discussed with my therapist) is fraught with danger, fraught with difficulty, and just generally fraught in all sorts of ways. Fraught-ful, and, I thought, somewhat boring. They want to get there, they can't get there, they get lost, they find Gollum, Gollum is annoying yet amusing, they get sidetracked, Gollum is just plain annoying now, they get taken, they get let go. Aside from Gollum's Sibyl impression and the fact that Sam really seems to like Frodo just a bit too much, what is supposed to be the "main" part of the story seemed very lackluster. There was no shortage of beautiful scenery, and the CGI work on Gollum was probably the best I've ever seen…but I just kept waiting for it to be over.

Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd) are in the clutches of the evil Uruk-Hai (many thanks to my editor for correcting everything I'm going to spell wrong in this review, by the way). Merry and Pippin might very well be my favorite characters, because they remind me so much of myself. Short, not too bright, usually hungry, and never too far from trouble. [Editor's Note: All of that is true, except the not-too-bright part.] And they got to spend just about the whole movie being carried somewhere! How cool is that? First they're being carried by their captors, and okay, that sucks, but then they get to just sit in a tree and ride around for the rest of the film. I'm told that there's something in the books about how they get big and then get small again-some Alice in Wonderland without cats and hatters, or something-but unfortunately, their parts are pretty much limited to minor plot exposition, comic relief, and the excuse to computer-animate a walking tree as much as possible.

Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli (Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and John Rhys-Davies), however, are another story. In fact, they're the story. No doubt about it, Rohan is where it's happening this time around, and our multi-racial heroes are right in the thick of it, along with a reincarnated-and-turned-white (though I still don't quite understand how that happens or what it means) Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen, who, if rumors are to be believed, will not only get to be Gandalf and Magneto, but possibly Professor Dumbledore, as well!).

I'm told that the Rohan storyline has changed quite a bit from the book version, but this is one of those instances where I don't care, because I enjoyed what happened. From what I've gathered, Eómer (Karl Urban) wasn't supposed to be banished, but if he wasn't how would he save the day at Helm's Deep? Eówyn (Miranda Otto) was, in my opinion, definitely a cooler character than Arwen, and it upsets me a little that Tolkien didn't have more strong female characters in the series (too much of me reading Robert Jordan, I guess). As for Arwen herself (Liv Tyler), I didn't see much point to the scenes she was in. The flashbacks served to remind the audience that Aragorn wasn't going to get into it with Eówyn, but that's about it. I must say, though, that I wish I could dress like these women more than once or twice a year and not get strange looks for it.

In conclusion (because I've rambled on enough already), The Two Towers was well worth the wait, worth the time spent in the theater, and, unusually enough, worth the outrageous ticket prices and the annoying fellow theater-goers. I don't think it quite matched up to Fellowship of the Ring, but it came close. The scenery and cinematography were unbelievable, the battle scenes were battle-riffic, and any movie that includes dwarf-tossing and stairway-surfing automatically gets my vote. The only thing better than dwarf-tossing is a pie fight, and I don't think we can look for that in Return of the King.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers gets three and a half of whatever I'm giving out these days. One for each hour I spent in the theater, and another half for the X-Men 2 trailer.

And I promise, I'll read it. Starting in 2004.