I saw Tolkien...

The thing with film biopics is that they're never accurate. One can only hope that the spirit of the focused person(s) hits the mark, so that the result isn't a propagandized misconception like "Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" and more like the heartfelt "The Elephant Man". 

From what I've read, director Thomas "Dome" Karukoski has long wished to film a J.R.R.Tolkien bio: a good sign. Whether the script, by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford, rings (pun intended) of precision is another matter. The Tolkien clan hasn't endorsed the movie, on the basis that its members weren't consulted on its content.

I can only presume that the movie, which concentrates on the writer's childhood through early adulthood, is mostly fictional in its attempt to tell a fellowship fable (i.e., a buddy tale).  At least the script doesn't avoid the author's involvement in World War I, which for the sake of censorious political correctness could have occurred.  

It should go without saying that wartime would be a jarring, testing-of-the-mettle experience for anyone. (Photos and footage of the Great War prove that in spades.)  Though "Tolkien" is marketed as a family film, it doesn't sugarcoat the horrors of war (anymore than Middle Earth's literature does) or the reasons that Tolkien and his friends participated in it. With this, the line between right and wrong is drawn throughout the drama, as well as the essence of lifelong duty: all that came to symbolize Tolkien's celebrated fiction and the adaptations that followed. 

There's also heartwarming filler and empathetic characterization to engage and appease. Nicholas "X-Men" Hoult portrays the titular icon and does a stand-up job of it. (He comes across as amiable and interesting, no matter the sequence, and Harry Gilby does a swell job setting that standard as kid Tolkien.)  Lily "Mirror Mirror" Collins and Mimi Keene play Tolkien's love, Edith Bratt, the former in later years and the latter during the early. Colm "Star Trek" Meaney is featured as the shepherding Father Francis Morgan and Derek Jacobi as the voluble Professor Joseph Wright, with Patrick Gibson as Robert Gilson, Anthony Boyle as Geoffrey Bache Smith, Tom Glynn-Carney as Christopher Wiseman and Craig Roberts as Sam.  

With "Tolkien" being more a coming-of-age/war picture than a meticulous essay on the author's imaginative pursuits in Wagnerian fantasy, it leaves sporadic time to the man's reveries.  However, when those transient moments do occur, fans will likely enjoy them.

It may be debatable whether the movie altogether does Tolkien justice.  It's a pity that the man who inspired the production wasn't around to dot its i's and cross its t's. Still, there are worse ways to spend two hours, and if Karukoski's engrossing tribute gets folks all the more interested in the remarkable raconteur, perhaps that above all validates its existence.