One of the centerpieces of the film is Leonard Nimoy's bizarre Ballad of Bilbo Baggins video, which is amusing but only mentioned in passing with a very short clip (an interview with Nimoy himself would have been great, unfortunately he declined to do one). The movie often intercuts weird modern day re-enactments of young adults from the 60s and 70s dancing and hanging out, which I guess were supposed to give the movie a kitschy feel but just seemed like filler. From here it moves on to cover the animated Lord of the Rings films from the late 70s and 80s, and finally Peter Jackson's monumental movie trilogy.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment for me was the fact that Ringers isn't all that funny. Many people thought the Star Trek fan documentary Trekkies was mean-spirited and degrading, but personally I found it both intriguing and endearing. When compared with a movie like Trekkies, Ringers seems rather dull, spending the vast majority of its time recapping dry historical facts and interviewing experts rather than trying to understand the wacky fans. By contrast, Trekkies spends a lot more time with only a handful of specific fans and focuses on their personal stories rather than Star Trek itself.

In Ringers, the fans' stories all kind of run together since they are mainly relegated to short clips of testimonials recorded from a booth at Comic Con. We do briefly meet the people who run the low budget home-made theme park "Hobbiton U.S.A." and get a few interviews with people lined up outside of The Two Towers premiere (reminiscent of the Star Wars fan doc Starwoids), but that's about it. It doesn't help that interviewer Cliff Broadway doesn't seem to know what he wants to get out of the fans to begin with, and asks obvious questions like "If Middle Earth were a real place, would you want to visit?"

Extra features on the DVD include deleted scenes, commentary from the production team, and a couple featurettes. Rock & Ringers is just a slightly extended version of the music segment already seen in the film, while The Ring Comes Full Circle is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the documentary itself, which feels a little self-important.

Maybe the film is trying to accomplish too much at once, but for whatever reason, Ringers: Lord of the Fans is neither as fascinating nor as quirky as I was hoping it would be. Fervent Tolkien and Lord of the Rings followers will probably not learn anything new, and anyone hoping for a comedic look at fandom in the vein of Trekkies will likely be disappointed. Ringers is not a complete waste of time, but certain not something you'll need to see more than once.

This review is also available at Space Junk.
ed: JH