Tolkien (2019)

Covers the teens and early adulthood of JRR Tolkien. He lives in some kind of foster home situation (where he meets his eventual wife) and gets to go to a "good" school by the grace of a benefactor (where he forms a tight friendship with three other boys). He eventually makes it to Oxford on scholarship and then to war.

I'd call myself a casual fan of the Ring movies, but I never cared for Tolkien's actual writing. So, it's entirely possible that I'm simply not the target audience for this, but I was definitely hoping for something a bit more engaging. The most interesting bit came when he switched majors -- to language -- after the head of that department heard some of his invented Elvish. But there's barely 10 minutes of that.

I really can't imagine that fans would be any more entertained by this bare-bones accounting of his early life than I was. Maybe they would be out of loyalty... but probably not from the merits of the film itself.

C