LOTR is good, but just good. I couldn't find why the people like it soo much. Being a fan of the cartoon during my childhood, i think the current LOTR is a totally watered down and being an "unintelligent" version of the original story (which many novel-based movie did). The dialogues in the cartoon itself was said to be simplified a lot from the original novel.
You see a lot of dialogues are clearly emasculated in the movie, losing its epic-ness essence. Just try to connect the story with the typical current-day generally smartass, self-serving, self-righteous, Aussie-like tall poppy syndrome audiences. The critics somehow missed this.
I put the film in the same category with Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor and Transformers. Except LOTR is much much more better. The similarity is that, although the fights, actions, on all movies are epic, they did destroy some part of the movie, like the story in both Bay's movie and in LOTR's case, the dialogues between the characters. But the story of that movie is still good. My favorite would be the Fellowship of the Ring (the first installment), since it is the most understandable for me.