J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so youre probably stoked for the movie version of his life, hoping itll be filled to bursting with adventure, brain-teasing fantasy and rock-em-sock-em action just like the books and the movies Peter Jackson directed into box-office and Oscar glory. Right?
Sorry, fans, here comes the buzzkill. Tolkien pronounced toll-keen as the film takes great pains to inform us is a bit of a stiff as cinema, rich in atmospherics but starved for the human spark that might uncover the man behind the myth. No one can blame the terrific Nicholas Hoult, who invests his considerable talent and searching energy into playing the young John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Since his days as a child actor (About a Boy) through his mature work in A Single Man and his gonzo explosion in Mad Max: Fury Road, Hoult is up for anything. But his best instincts are muffled in stuffy period details that choke the life out of the film and his performance.
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Director Dome Karukoski (Tom of Finland), working from a convoluted script by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford, treads so carefully over the formative years of Tolkien, mostly referred to as Ronald, that youd think the authors estate was holding a gun to the filmmakers head. Nothing of the sort. The literary gatekeepers had long ago disavowed any connection to this Hollywood twaddle. With nothing to lose, youd expect the project to leap into interpretive flights of fancy. Instead, it timidly settles for gilding the lily.
The script stodgily sketches in the biopic details. Tolkien, a penniless orphan, lives with his younger brother Hilary (James MacCallum) in an English boarding house, conforming to the will of his guardian, Father Francis (Colm Meaney). The priest does not like the goo-goo eyes his ward is exchanging with frisky fellow boarder and orphan Edith Bratt (Lily Collins), thinking it will hurt his chances to win a scholarship to Oxford. Its in those hallowed halls that Tolkien cements his friendship with three students: Christopher Wiseman (Tom Glynn-Carney), Robert Gilson (Patrick Gibson) and Geoffrey Smith (Anthony Boyle, in the films best and most heartfelt performance after Hoults). The four buddies form a secret society called the T.C.B.S. It stands for the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, where they lads meet to stoke their intellectual curiosity and binge on, yes, tea.
Its here that mention should be made of the films unfortunate framing device that toggles between Tolkiens school days and his horrific time in the World War I trenches during the Battle of Sommes. An invasion of lice led to the future author contracting trench fever, a disease which sent him home to safety while several friends died in bloody combat.
All this would be fine if the film didnt huff and puff so strenuously and wrong-headedly to make every incident call attention to itself as part of what would become Tolkiens magnum opus about Middle Earth. Collect the Easter eggs as our hero takes Edith to the opera to hear Wagners Ring cycle about one ring to rule them all. He even charms his future wife Edith with an invented language that will morph into Elvish. At Oxford, philologist Joseph Wright (Derek Jacobi) cautions Tolkien that his invented words must have meaning as well as music. And it turns out that the T.C.B.S isnt just a society of friends its a fellowship. The most egregious aha moments take place in the trenches where soldiers in gas masks look like the Nazgl and the shell-shocked Tolkien imagines incendiary bombs as the fire-breathing dragons of his soon-to-be classic legendarium. Oh, brother.
The references are relentless. Never mind that its insulting to think that the movies subject would tolerate seeing the essential moments of his life reduced to mere building blocks in a literary origin story. Those who advocate for Tolkiens true genius will be uttering the same three words long before the credits roll: Make. It. Stop.
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