The movie starts off with a fairly condensed history of the publishing of Tolkien's books. There is a Terry Gilliam-esque cut-and-paste animated sequence that whisks us through much of this time period, glossing over many of the details of the cultural climate. All we learn is that some critics called Tolkien's work "juvenile". Then we head to the 60s and 70s where the film touches on hippie culture, and Tolkien's influence on music including such bands as Led Zeppelin and Rush. Geddy Lee himself is interviewed for the film, as is Lemmy from Motorhead, who is so unintelligible at points that he needs subtitles.
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?"
Article comments
1 - Bill Wallo
It does sound much like a DVD extra stretched to a full-length DVD. The recently released Sound of Music DVD had a featurette about the "sing along" phenomenon where people watch the movie and sing along (rather like with Rocky Horror) - sounds like Ringers might have been worthy of about the same treatment (i.e., subordinate disc on another set).
2 - Christopher Rose
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh!
I've had a great time seeing and singing along with The Rocky Horror Show more than once and always thought it great funtertainment.
To learn that there are actually people who do this to The Sound of Music has quite horrified me. I don't know if I'm ever quite going to get over the image of a room of shiny happy people all singing "The hills are alive..."
*shudders*
3 - Phillip Winn
"I am sixteen, going on seventeen..."
What a bummer of a report on Ringers. What a wasted opportunity!