Let's not beat around the bush here: The Fellowship of the Ring is a superb mythopoetic epic, full of thunderous emotion and as visually awe-inducing as anything you've ever seen. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it positively Homeric. This ain't no Harry Potter, that's for sure.

To get that invidious but understandable comparison out of the way right off the bat - Harry Potter is to The Fellowship of the Ring as the ten-year-old English schoolboy and wannabe magician is to the wise and powerful wizard Gandalf (here played by the wonderful Ian McKellen). Add to that the plain truth that Potter director Chris Columbus (Home Alone) is a hack while Fellowship director Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures) is an artist, and one can see that we are dealing with two completely different phenomena. Harry Potter just isn't in the same league (and I LIKED Harry Potter).

J.R.R. Tolkien's classic has fascinated millions and Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring (part one of a three-part trilogy, the other two being The Two Towers and The Return of the King, set for release at Christmas 2002 and 2003, respectively) will do the same. When hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) hands down the magic ring he found so long ago to young Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), aged wizard Gandalf uncovers the ring's essentially evil nature and the epic quest begins. Accompanied by representatives from the other kingdoms of Middle-earth - the Elves, Dwarves and Humans (Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn and Sean Bean as Boromir) - and led by Gandalf, Frodo and his protective fellows cross treacherous territory to try and return the ring to Mount Doom, where it can be destroyed. Pursued by ringwraiths and orcs determined to secure the ring for the evil Sauron - its original owner - and haunted by the power contained within the ring itself ('The ring is trying to get back to its master. It WANTS to be found!'), our intrepid heroes are forced to confront pure evil itself and, as readers of the books know, not all members of the fellowship survive.

It is hard to express just how amazingly well Jackson and his crew of artists - most notably cinematographer Andrew Lesnie and the special effects team - have rendered Middle-earth and its vast plains and snow-covered mountains. The Shire, the town of Bree, Rivendell, Weathertop, the mines of Moria - all are made vivid by a combination of sets and special effects that have been as seamlessly blended together as any I've ever seen.

Jackson, who, like so many, obviously read and became obsessed by the book as a kid, demonstrates an artistry that perfectly serves the source. His vision - of the evil wizard Saruman's underground lair, or the awful peril that awaits our heroes down in the mines, to name but two examples - is as detailed and emotionally powerful as anything committed to celluloid. Alternating between scenes of transcendent beauty and pure, unadulterated evil, Jackson's appropriately violent fantasia leaves viewers breathless time and time again. When Liv Tyler's elf Arwen and the injured Frodo are galloping across the plains with the hooded ringwraiths breathing down their necks, the scene conjures up images of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, even as its pure physicality sets the heart racing and the blood pounding.

While doing some research on the net earlier this week, I came across the following from someone who had seen an advance screening of the film: 'I will carry this experience with me for the rest of my life'.' For the first time in a long time, I can actually understand how that could happen. The Fellowship of the Ring is indeed heady, thrilling stuff.