While a lot of foley and sound effects have been added to the final mix, they aren’t dense enough to pull you into any one area of the film, but they’re representative enough to not cause the studio-nature of the dialogue to feel as cold and sterile as it otherwise might. The music helps further retain a feeling of warmth to the film, with a really excellent and sweeping score being composed by Mark D’Errico.
Use of Budget
By their very nature, spoofs and parodies are deceptively expensive because of how many props are required to pull off most gags, and then when you combine the amount of places this film had to be shot in with the sheer number of costumes and extras, the budget is amazing. Even more so when you realize that they paid someone to work full time on the effects of this film for a full year!
Lasting Appeal
There is a lot of great humor in this film and I am definitely interested in showing my other Lord of the Rings-fan friends this movie. While the unmodified voiceovers and problematic greenscreen actually fit the overall campiness of this film, some of the Lowest Common Denominator humor gets in the film’s way and decreases the rewatchability a bit.
(While technically, film critiques don’t cover DVD design, I do feel that a few words should be included about the double disc version of this film, as its creativity is pretty impressive. The second DVD features two fully produced music videos from and based on the movie, a full trailer, a Behind-the-scenes featurette, a documentary on the fictional creator of the book “The Dork of the Rings”, footage of the cast and crew at Ring-Con and Gen-Con, and, most shockingly, short films that were winners of a Dork of the Rings fan film contest--in which fans made short films based on Dork of the Rings. Take a moment to mull that concept over. Richardson and his crew did such a good job promoting their spoof fan film, that fans actually created their own fan films of his film! I’ve never seen that sort of accomplishment outside of those movies that have been promoted by the Hollywood media machine. My hat is off to these folks!)
Overall Comment
This is an amazingly creative venture undertaken by people who really wanted to show that no-budget filmmakers can boldly step out into the world of fantasy, which has been completely cost-prohibitive before. While there are some stumbles and problems, Mr. Richardson and his company did an admirable job of forging into this undiscovered land and finding a great deal of success there. I look forward to seeing what they set their hands to in the future.
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Content |
7.0 |
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Visual
Look |
8.3 |
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Use
of Audio |
8.5 |
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Use
of Budget |
10.0 |
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Lasting
Appeal |
8.0 |
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Overall
Score |
8.4
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