The Daily Telegraph

There are three hours of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first third of the tale. The person next to me found the film slow and dull, but she had not read the book. The screen version makes the dark riders and their screaming horses with burning-coal eyes frightening enough for me. Think twice before taking an imaginative eight-year-old.

The Independent

As fable, though, it's likely to satisfy only those who are easily satisfied: either children, or grown-ups who seek a refuge from the more ambiguous moral battles of life. The Fellowship of the Ring finds its true kinship not with the grand myths of history but with the faded photocopies of recent years.

The Times

The film is almost three hours long, but it whizzed past faster than one of Gandalf's fireworks, which turned the sky above Hobbiton into a blaze of eye-piercing special effects. From those first scenes, where the old wizard (Ian McKellen) is in charge of pyrotechnics at the 111th birthday party of Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm), to the gruesome battle scenes near the end, where Bilbo's nephew, Frodo (Elijah Wood) tries to keep the ring out of evil's way, we were gripped.

The Guardian

Jackson (the director) has given himself a mountain to climb in tackling Tolkien's obsessively multi-layered fantasy, intricate back stories, made-up languages and all. On the whole he copes beautifully. The film honours the text without being enslaved by it. Explanatory dialogue may creak on occasion, but the action scenes have a snap and pace that suggest a film-maker not scared to bring his own touch to the material. Physically, too, the film is a triumph: an art department's dream and a potent advert for New Zealand.

The Daily Mail

Tolkien's gentle humour remains, augmented by a few neatly topical flourishes (about the quality of hobbits' tobacco and the ethics of dwarf-tossing) to make a modern audience laugh, without detracting from the film's seriousness and grandeur.

Even the most boringly obsessive of Tolkien nerds is likely to find little, if anything, to dislike. And even if you didn't care for the professor's books, you should still thrill to the movie if you have any feeling for myth, narrative, landscape or cinema.

The Mirror (by Tom Cosyns, aged 10)

The effects were very exciting and the film was so magical I accepted it all as real. When the river bordering Rivendell turned into a raging rapid to drown the Dark Riders it was amazing. And when the hobbits had to leap a chasm I forgot to breathe.

Even though I know the story and what was going to happen next I was on the edge of my seat throughout.

The Daily Star

Jackson creates hugely entertaining thrills, action and sterling suspense and the first-rate cast headed by Elijah Wood as Frodo, Ian McKellen as the Good Wizard Gandalf and Christopher Lee as his (inevitably) wicked opponent, Liv Tyler, Sean Bean, Ian Holm and Cate Blanchett could hardly be bettered.

But they really have their work cut out to hold their own against the weird scene-stealing monsters, the legions of nightmare creatures and unforgettably stunning spectacle Jackson conjures up.

The Daily Express

Whether it will prove quite as popular as the first Star Wars film - as many maintain - remains to be seen, but like Star Wars it is fantastically enjoyable tosh on an epic scale.

Parents be warned. A young child will need nerves of steel to sit through it. At three hours adults may also need backsides of steel - and a willingness to embrace a world of hobbits and magic rings with a straight face.

The Sun

For almost three hours you are completely immersed in a stunning fantasy of hobbits, dwarves, elves and orcs.

No matter how far-fetched the plot of the characters, all scepticism is blown away by the sheer scale and realism of the sets, make-up and special effects plus an acting performance by Sir Ian McKellan that even puts Potter's Alan Rickman and Robbie Coltrane in the shade.