A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since there was a decent cast involved and since it was available on Disney+, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, even though it apparently didn’t get much love when it was released, I actually enjoyed it though. I have watched many biopics dealing with some famous writers, many much more prestigious and obviously better than this one, but I think it was the first one I saw which was dealing with a writer who I was actually familiar with his work. Indeed, like many other people, I have read ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and I have watched many times the movies adapted from these classic books. Anyway, it was just really cool to get acquainted with the guy behind these amazing stories. Sure, I guess the real Tolkien fans and scholars were probably bothered with the way his life was handled here but since I had no knowledge of it, it didn’t really bother me. In my opinion, it was pretty neat how they managed to show how some real locations like the lush English countryside or the rather dark and noisy Birmingham directly inspired his work. On the other hand, I didn’t care much about the back-and-forth with the WWI scenes. I get what they were trying to achieve but it was rather ineffective and unnecessary. I also wish that they did spend a little bit more time about his life in Africa and his father. Indeed, he was actually born in what would become South Africa and his father passed away while Tolkien was on a trip in the UK. Sure, all this happened during the first 3 years of his life so I get why it wasn’t included but I wish they could have spent some time on this. It was also weird how Christopher Wiseman, one of his best friends, completely disappeared from the movie, when he actually did survive WWI. I guessed they lost touch afterwards but, then, they could have developed more what happened between them. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I thought it was a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Tolkien’s life and work. 

7/10