In J.R.R. Tolkien’s original tale, if Hobbiton had been a golf course, the Elves had been pointy eared Elvis impersonators, and the real villain had been an evil WalMart-inspired megalocorporation, then Peter Jackson might have directed the tale told in Dork of the Rings. But, since they weren’t, director Timothy Richardson, along with his mythical co-director Jack Peterson, had to pick up the slack and direct this extremely complex spoof of all things Middle Earth.
Told from the perspective of Frudo Buggins, The Dork of the Rings tells the story of one small man in big shoes who must stop the evil corporation, Dork-Mart. Pulled from his Throbbit hole on the West Shire golf course by Randolf, the strangely pedophilic wizard, Frudo comes into possession of the circular ring of credit that binds all people in debt to Dork-Mart. (To quote the film’s main theme: “One Franchise To Rule Them All, One Sales Pitch To Blind Them, One Stop Shopping at the Mall, and Bankruptcy will Grind Them.”)
He finds himself with no choice but to journey to Bank Boom, in the far off reaches of Lardor, to get his ring of circular credit cancelled. His companion for the journey is Ham, a rotund friend who swears to protect him. Along the way, he is also accompanied by Arogant the Wrangler, Legoblocks the Elfis, Gimpi the Dweeb (the short, hairy hacker from the IT clan), Boredandqueer (the effeminately gay latino), and, eventually, Princess Femowen (the feminist princess of the Elfises).
As he must make his way into Lardor, he will have to stay alive despite the fact that he is being sought by the large-nosed creditors of Lardor and the evil Spork Warriors (spawned by the evil Sweetandsourman). If that weren’t enough, he’ll have to outwit the machinations of multi-armed accountants and the multiple personalities of Scrottum.
In order to get to Bank Boom, Frudo
will help from folks like Ham...
...and the perpetually vain warrior,
Arogant the Wrangler.
Content
If the world of ‘Campiness’ was a major city, then The Grindhouse would be in the suburbs, Army of Darkness and The Rocky Horror Picture Show would be next door neighbors in Midtown, and The Dork of the Rings would be smack in the middle of the Inner City. The Dork of the Rings takes the somewhat pejorative term of “campiness” to such amazing levels that it actually turns it into an art form.
With that said, Dork of the Rings is not for everyone. While it’s aimed at folks who are fans of Lord of the Rings, taking clever jibes at most of the characters, it also walks down the road of the lowest common denominator a number of times. And, when that lowest common denominator involve “fart and poop” jokes, then you start to alienate an audience who are, by their nature, not the lowest common denominator. (A few examples of these LCD gags are that the Ring is stolen from the evil CEO of Dork-Mart by the old “Pull My Finger” gag, Femowen ends up sucking poison out of Frudo’s butt with her mouth, and Gladwraprial’s pool is actually a giant excrement filled toilet.) When you look at how many Lord of the Rings’ enthusiasts are doctors, lawyers, scientists, and members of Mensa, choosing jokes that seem to have come straight out of the Wayan’s brother’s debacle, Scary Movie, is probably not the best idea. Luckily, after the midway point of the film, most of the basest jokes had been used up, allowing the film’s creators to move on to more jokes about the traditional Nintendo and other nerdy humor that made me chuckle.
Besides the decrease in potty humor, I found that the latter half of the film flowed much more smoothly than the first half of the film, with story plot devices that fit the overall theme without seeming too excessively orchestrated. The first half of the movie tended to struggle with something that many parodies do, which is having things that seem a bit too contrived to flow properly, strictly so that they exactly mirror the movie they’re parodying. In the latter half, they were able to achieve parody more often by roughly approximating the movie they were parodying, which made the parody more clever and much less forced.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s original tale, if Hobbiton had been a golf course, the Elves had been pointy eared Elvis impersonators, and the real villain had been an evil WalMart-inspired megalocorporation, then Peter Jackson might have directed the tale told in Dork of the Rings. But, since they weren’t, director Timothy Richardson, along with his mythical co-director Jack Peterson, had to pick up the slack and direct this extremely complex spoof of all things Middle Earth.
