Lord of the Rings begins, as any adaptation of this sort must, with a Plot Squeeze voice-over and flashback. Cate Blanchett intones gravely as an unscary grille-faced villain with the distinctive Japanese look of a Power Rangers silently brandishes a sword and gets a finger chopped off. The required exposition gets exposited, and we flash forward three thousand years, to a grassy and peaceful land called the Shire, inhabited by small, comical beings called Hobbits.

Welcome to the difficult world of book-as-movie, handled with skill, intelligence, and respect by a director (Peter Jackson) with a demonstrated taste for dark humor and camp (he helmed Dead Alive and The Frighteners), and, pleasingly, a fan's understanding of the High Fantasy Epic. And what an epic to choose! J.R.R. Tolkien's world of halflings, elves, misty mountains, and big, warty baddies has defined modern fantasy. Tolkien birthed the most virulent set of memes in contemporary literature, and we've been encountering the same characters over and over ever since. The ideas have existed since the dawn of storytelling, but it's Tolkien who weaponized them for the genre: fifty years later, fantasy still abounds with Orc-like villains, Hobbit-like heroes, and august Elf-like sages.

Jackson's Hobbits are not quite the plain, middle-aged Hobbits of Tolkien's books, but a prepossessing bunch thirty years younger: rosy-cheeked, ivory-skinned, and childlike, with mops of curls, and prone to power hugs. The elfin waifishness of Jackson's interpretation works (without alienating the youth market). Ian Holm is a suitable Bilbo: a busybody with hidden depths both sinister and touching. Elijah Wood (Frodo), with his limpid, expressive blue eyes, long lashes, and chiseled lips and cheekbones, belongs in a gauzy fantasy world more than any other human I can name. The wide-eyed Hobbits aren't twee, as the young actors pull it off, making the moment all the graver when Frodo's jaw begins to set with determination so grim you'll gulp in sympathy. The surprising resilience and inner strength of the ineffectual-seeming Hobbits is a strong theme of the film, and Wood & company deliver, showing us Hobbit hearts brave and true, courageous with or without second breakfast and a nap by the fireside.

The first two hours flow by as lots, and lots, and lots of plot aggregates, and the Hobbits are swept up in a maelstrom of conflicting forces. The movie is more a series of episodes than a story that builds on past events. The characters travel from place to place, pushing on or doubling back, in the thrall of an archetypal fantasy MacGuffin: a quietly and powerfully evil ring that must be destroyed before it falls into the wrong hands, or corrupts the right hands.

The core heroes are all male, but women pop in and out of the action with the intensity of a camera flash. Each Elven locale has a resident distaff beauty who dispenses wisdom and healing. The men get wiser and get healed, and then jet off again, zigzagging all over Middle Earth to battle villains, hike snowy mountains, and boat down scenic rivers. Liv Tyler (Arwen Undomiel) speaks in a surprisingly mature High Fantasy Dramatic Whisper (and decent British accent!), bolts away on horseback, ministers to the sick, smooches her paramour in the twilight, and passes from the tale altogether. Cate Blanchett as Galadriel captures the inhuman, imperial creepiness of Tolkien's Elves: these are not the green-clad imps of folklore and fairytale, but elegant, jaded fallen angels grown tired of trying to bend the troubled world of Middle-Earth to their innate moral, intellectual, and artistic superiority. (No wonder we sympathize more with the Hobbits.)

Places roll by swiftly, like vistas glimpsed through the window of a train-the stock-fantasy locale of Bree, complete with tavern, colorful toothless patrons, and upstairs lodgings; Rivendell, full of windblown golden leaves; Lothlorien, an Elven forest stronghold that's a sort of uptown Ewok Village; Mordor, the enemy's foul stronghold, permanently enveloped in stormclouds and capped with an active volcano.

In the third hour, the Fellowship of the Ring, those sworn to defend Frodo and help him destroy the ring he bears, forms at last, and the whole thing gels with a vengeance. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) is no longer a generic action hero, a warm body meant to brandish a gleaming sword and kiss the bodice-clad female, but a complex, noble man with a tortured and kingly gravitas. Aragorn is the returning king of LOTR III: Return of the King, and Mortensen, with little screen time, creates a potential monarch worth following. Sean Bean is the disillusioned warrior Boromir, hoping to return his people to glory, and while his character is introduced too late in the game, he makes up for lost time in a naturalistic and appealing performance. The two warriors plant the seed of the trilogy's second quest, along with destroying the One Ring: to restore order and just, centralized power to Middle-Earth.

Not only can the director and actors bear the weight of an epic, but in LOTR the CGI creatures are at last creatures more than CGI! There's still some of the blurry, artificial fast movement that is the annoying hallmark of CGI, but the two computer-animated monsters here-both encountered in the direful Mines of Moria-are two of cinema's most impressive electronic entities. The first actually has a menacing mien and is a believable part of an engrossing, tense fight scene; and the second, a giant fire-demon made of living, glowing, smoking embers, is an eye-popping visual treat.

There's a little weirdness with the non-CGI effects-John Rhys-Davies (Indy and Marion's buddy Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark) as the dwarf Gimli has a distorted, swollen face and rheumy eyes of differing sizes. It's an unremarkable performance from a fine actor, and a lousy makeup in a film of mostly superior effects work. I read that Rhys-Davies was allergic to the makeup and could only work every third day; this explains a lot.

An innocence and excitement is in the film, in the swell of the rolling, fruitful Shire, in the gentle faces of the young actors portraying the Hobbits, in the wizard Gandalf's (Ian McKellen) wise and twinkling visage. For those who seek the thrill of vicarious literary or filmic adventure, or who crave the stately emotional power and moral purity of the Tolkienesque epic, this is your tub of popcorn, friends. It's scary yet uplifting, sweeping, heartfelt, and spirited. It's the real High Fantasy, trimmed down for the screen but with its golden heart intact and beating.

When I was a kid, I waited three long years for the second Star Wars movie. I'm not a kid anymore, and I'm glad I only have to wait until next Christmas for installment number two of Lord of the Rings.

Jennifer Saylor, December 21, 2001