Quick Movie Review: Tolkien (2019)

It's... it's almost OK.  It's beautifully made and well-acted, those are its strengths.  The rest mostly tells a patchwork story of a young man caught between a rock and a hard place and the trenches of WWI, who somehow makes his way into academia despite the bad odds.  Now, exactly how close this all is to the real-life Tolkien I can't quite say, but the basic outline is correct.

The downside is that it's overly choppy, cutting between trenches and schoolboy incidents, then back to graduate studies, back to the trenches, to to-be wife Edith, etc.  And somehow, the magic and humor is missing.  That's the real tragedy here.  It's not exactly joyless, but the funny-smart side of Tolkien remains largely unexplored, leaving only a few instances of schoolboy antics.

Also, there's a sort of ham-handedness to the proceedings.  "Oh that's where he got the idea for the Dead Marshes," or the devoted enlisted man "Sam" (real? a semi-true story? figment of a hack script writer's mind?), those sorts of things.  The approach cheapens the revelation of Tolkien's formative experiences into mere fan-service box-checking.

In summary, this film occupies a sort of uncanny valley: not really deep enough for the people who enjoyed the book The Road to Middle Earth, but a the same time, not entertaining enough for the people who wouldn't read that book.  So who's left?  Um, people who'll take a flyer on Netflix, I suppose.  Anyway I did enjoy the scenery along the way.

Two Stars out of Four.  Just save your time and read The Road to Middle Earth instead.  This movie is not a complete waste of time, it's kind of barely enjoyable, but don't go out of your way to see it.