infringes on
their mega billion budget movie 'The Hobbit'. It
doesn't, not really, considering I don't remember hearing the
word 'hobbit' one single time in the movie, plus I don't even
think Tolkien invent the word but there it is. Now this
movie is called 'Clash of the Empires' or 'Lord of the Elves'
or something which doesn't make it any better, and not names
we're going to use, but come on WB, leave my people alone!
Here's one thing 'Age of the Hobbits' has over eighteen hours
worth 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Hobbit' movies. With
Christopher Judge as the star, this movie now has more Black
people in it than all of those other Peter Jackson movies
combined. And the Orcs don't count.
Regardless, this movie is about the tree people, the rock
people and the giants. The tree people are a happy
little bunch living in hollow trees, until the crazed, fanged,
cannibal minded rock people and their flying… hell if I know
what those things are, but they look way too big to be able
fly, no matter what kind of wings you stick on them…
come-a-callin'. They kidnap the tree people including
Tree Mom, heck if I remember the actual names of these
characters, and take them to the rock village in the
mountains. Now Tree Dad, Tree Son and Tree Daughter have
to make the perilous trip across the village of the Giants to
make it to the Rock People abode and save Tree Mom.
Eventually on this adventure Tree Dad helps the giant Amthar
(Judge) out of a jam and now the tree family has a friend 4
Lyfe! In fact Amthar thinks his giant people, who are
just regular sized dudes truth be told, should help the tree
people, but the giant chief is kind of a dick, for lack of a
better word, and says 'NO!'. No worries though because
Amthar, the lady warrior Laylan (Bail Ling), along with a
couple of Disposable Dudes will help the Tree People get their
folks back before they get eaten up.
This trip to the lair of the completely insane Rock People
will be perilous one. Giant spiders, giant poisonous
lizards… and I'm thinking them lizards being giants is bad
enough… and not to mention the Rock People themselves with
their razor teeth, wacky rituals, inability to speak legibly,
the lack of women except for their lunatic leader and their
annoying tendency to eat tiny people. What can a couple
of midgets, a hot chick, a big dude who will be incapacitated
for most of the movie, and a couple of disposable dudes do
against a force like this? Kick that ass. That's
what they can do. Take that J.R. Tolkien!
Wanna know one of the things that's good about director Joseph
L. Lawson's film 'Age of the Hobbits'? Christopher
Judge's voice, that's what. This cat can say just about
anything and make it sound legitimately important. So
either the dialog was remarkably better for this movie,
compared to what I'm used to at this dollar range, or
Christopher Judge saying stuff just made it sound that much
better. Another thing that was above board for 'Age of
the Hobbits' were the special effects. Now to be honest,
since this movie was shot outdoors in Cambodia, most of the
set design was done by God, and might I say The Lord did an
especially good job on this one. But God's design aside,
the few CGI effects that were in this one were pretty
effective, such as the flying… whatever those things were… or
the spiders or the lizards, they all integrated well in to the
scenery and looked very good.
Now what wasn't so good in this movie, and was actually
borderline bizarre, was the voice dubbing. On one side
of the spectrum we have Christopher Judge's deep voiced, panty
dropping dulcet tones, but on the other end we have this
combination of ill-synchronized, cackling, bad matching vocals
used for our locals. I get these people probably can't
speak English, and if they can, it probably isn't very good,
but surely we could've done just a little better than
this. It was distracting. I'm just glad they
didn't voice dub for Bai Ling. And another thing that
might've been slightly disturbing, that being that the Giant
Amthar and the dwarfian Tree Daughter looked like they might
have something going on. Even though I'm sure Tree
Daughter is an adult, she's still like three feet tall.
They just appeared to be biologically incompatible is all.
But was the movie any good though? Well… let's just say
it grew on me. It all started off a little suspect, like
most movies from The Asylum tend to do, but the story being
told in this one at least followed a logical progression,
which in itself is a minor miracle, the narrative also had a
steady crescendo before coming to its respectable
conclusion.
If you don't regularly watch movies such as 'Age of the
Hobbits' then there is little chance that you will enjoy
it. It is flawed and the flaws are numerous, but if you
are watching this with your modern b-movie thinking cap on,
then 'Age of the Hobbits' isn't so bad. I'd even go as
far as to call it tolerable.
