Nicole,

hmmm...it could be that Bilbo has simply had his years fall on him all at once because he no longer holds the ring, but that's not how it's supposed to work. The ring's prolonging power is supposed to linger with the bearer to some extent, and aging proceeds at a slightly slower than normal pace--the slowness depending on how long you held the ring. Gandalf explains this in the book; Gollum was originally a hobbit, he says, and held the ring for hundreds of years. If it worked as you suggest, and he suddenly aged when he gave up the ring, he would have dropped dead! In the book, Bilbo is older and rather tired when the hobbits reach Rivendell because he is seventeen years older, or 128. He is the oldest living hobbit (barring Gollum), according to one passage which claims that no living hobbit except Bilbo was old enough to remember a given event (I can't remember what it was, though!)

This is all getting very esoteric, though. My main point was just that the filmmakers clearly wanted to have youthful actors playing the hobbits because they were going after the 18-29 male audience, and that some of their manipulations of the plot were clearly designed to allow that. It's not a big sin, but there it is.

Shambles, it could have been worse but it also could have been better. David Lynch did his best when he made Dune, but that didn't stop it from sucking. I'm not saying LOTR sucked (it didn't), but it was as many have said on this thread, a sped-up, dumbed-down, action-flick version of the story. To some extent this is inevitable, and as I've said before they made a good movie. But it hasn't got the greatness factor of really classic movies, and I think in time this will be recognized. We'll have to wait and see, though!