Okay, I just saw this movie last night at 10 PM, and I'd like to go on the record as saying it was abso-frickin-lutely amazing.
If I had to sum it up in one single word, I'd choose this one:
perfect. Let me admit, first, that I'm not a die-hard Tolkien fan: I've read the LOTR trilogy, and the Hobbit, but only once each, and although I enjoyed them a great deal, my relationship with Tolkien never went farther than that. I also have to admit to not being a great Movie Maven: anyone's who's read my posts could have told you that, however. I enjoy movies. I enjoy some of them quite a bit, and I definitely know what I like, but I have trouble getting into the super-fine points or subtleties of them.
So, having said all that, FOTR was perfect for me. I'm not big into niggling details about the differences between the movie and the book. The point of this movie, in my opinion, was not to adapt the book to film: it was to tell the story of the Fellowship of the Ring, using the film medium. I think it did this, wonderfully. Both the movie and the book tell the same story, and that story was told beautifully in both mediums.
The gestalt....the major IDEA....the feeling of the movie....it perfectly invoked the story that was originally told in the book.
I think Tolkien would be proud