Review: Tolkien

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: The life of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, is tracked from his early days as an orphan and prep school student to his adult life as a young intellectual in love and as a soldier in W.W.I.

REVIEW: According to TOLKIEN, just about every aspect of author J.R.R. Tolkien's life was prelude in some way to his epic books THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. And, maybe that's true; maybe Tolkien really did see fire-breathing dragons in the ruined fields of France during World War I. Maybe everywhere he looked there was inspiration for characters that would years later become household names (well, for plenty of people, anyway). But as presented in this biopic, starring Nicolas Hoult as the titular character, the film is less like a testament to the man's life and more like a cash-in on the popularity of the RINGS books and films. While it more or less heartfelt in demeanor, there's an unmistakable air of cynicism just underneath the handsome veneer, as if this lavish biopic is a spinoff of Peter Jackson's massive franchise.

The film certainly looks nice. Director Dome Karukoski, his cinematographer and art directors have made Tolkien's worlds – real and imagined – incredibly appealing, visually, with every new set another opportunity to scream "nominate me for a technical Oscar!" This is very much appreciated, because unfortunately the movie moves at a hobbit's pace, drifting from scene to scene leisurely, quite taking on the persona of the intellectual but awkward Tolkien in his younger years. It's fine, this is an inoffensive movie (although the Tolkien estate might feel differently), but the longer it goes on the more you wonder if it's telling you anything at all insightful about the author that couldn't be found on his Wiki page.

There are all those references, though, and one might dare to guess they were at the forefront of every script meeting during pre-production. While any clear-thinking audience member could spot the several allusions to the RINGS books/films, TOLKIEN often goes out of its way to point directly at them and say, "Get it?" Tolkien's friendship with a group of precocious boys at a prep school is labeled a "fellowship." He's accompanied by a dutiful friend named Sam during his frightening journey through the trenches of France to find an old pal. Etc. Etc. Then there are the fantastical sequences in the midst of battle that, while fairly striking in a Terry Gilliam-esque sort of way, seem to reduce the horror of war to mere encouragement for Tolkien's imagination.

Hoult is, of course, a very good actor, and he's very serviceable in the role of Tolkien, although the character never really comes to vivid life. Good too is Harry Gilby, who plays the younger Tolkien with the right mixture of confidence and insecurity; the young actors who play his fellowship are all rather solid as well. Lily Collins gets the "wife" role, and though she's a very appealing presence in the film (especially when resembling, you guessed it, a heavenly female character from one of Tolkien's books), there's nothing particularly substantial about the character or the relationship between the two. Even if based 100% on truth, the beats of their burgeoning romance are predictable and formulaic. At the end of the day it's the screenplay that sinks TOLKIEN, offering up a fairly unexceptional, by-the-numbers account of an exceptional author's life. Without the charisma of Hoult and Collins, without those harrowing war sequences, the film would lay flatter than a pancake.

I am not a LORD OF THE RINGS fanatic, have never been smitten with those particular works (I like the movies just fine but they weren't seminal for me), so it's entirely possible that an enthusiastic student of the author's will find TOLKIEN a more rousing experience. Still, there seems little doubt even the most tireless devotees of Tolkien will find the movie lacking; a superficial look at the man's legacy when a more thorough examination would have been preferable.

Tolkien

BELOW AVERAGE

5

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